Forms of Corporate Responsibility: Conceptualizing Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, and Solidarity View Digital Media

Focused Discussion
Emma Thornberg,  Rejina M. Selvam,  Miquel Bastons  

The primary purpose of this research is to differentiate the conceptualization of corporate sustainability (CS) from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate solidarity. The objectives are threefold: first, we provide a literature review to show the differences in the conceptualizations of the three phenomena and construct a taxonomy of corporate responsibility; second, we perform a search of corporations’ annual responsibility reports and websites representing different sectors to investigate corporations’ understandings of CS, CSR and corporate solidarity, and perform a technical analysis of the corporations’ understandings of these concepts and how they implement these concepts into their business practices; third, based on questionnaire data from 93 different corporations, we investigate the fit between what our taxonomy of corporate responsibility declares and how corporations conceptualize CS, CSR and corporate solidarity. The results suggest that sustainability managers have misconceptions between the three forms of corporate responsibility. The contribution of this research study may have several practical implications for corporations and theoretical advances for future researchers. First, to our knowledge, no study prior to this has proposed a taxonomy of the three dimensions of corporate responsibility. The definitions proposed in our study will offer corporations a better understanding of corporate responsibility, which will allow managers to properly identify CSR, CS, and corporate solidarity goals for their corporation. This will also allow corporations to assess with more accuracy their relative success in achieving CSR, CS, and corporate solidarity goals. Furthermore, this research may help corporations better understand how to financially invest in corporate responsibility.