Strategizing corporate social responsibility

This chapter deals with a discussion of the changing expectations about companies’ responsibilities towards society. It presents various corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches and discusses how these are influenced by a differentiation-compliance tension. The chapter explores several relational tactics that help organizational leaders to garner support for and acceptance of their CSR actions. The contemporary understanding of CSR and the roles and responsibilities of business firms towards society have fundamentally changed over the last few decades. An important tension pervades how business firms approaches CSR, namely between compliance with societal expectations in order to not fall behind and reduce risk and differentiation in order to stand out from the competition. A look at the theory helps to better understand this tension. The essence of the business-case motive for CSR is encapsulated in the slogan ‘doing well by doing good’.