Abstract: Audience decisions regarding whether to continue to support a corporation after it has been perceived as culpable for socially irresponsible behaviour is “coin of the realm” in selecting which firms (or which parts of a firm) will be able to survive a CSI-scandal. Our empirical setting is an embedded polar case of audience support, the Parmalat case, following a severe CSI scandal. Whilst the adaptive strategies taken to maintain the harmed moral legitimacy were a necessary procedural phase to consent the firms’ survival, they could not be considered sufficient to reintegrate the firm with its main constituent audiences. Essential to the maintaining process was the presence of rational effectiveness preserved from CSI event.

Abstract: We integrate resource dependence theory with institutional theory in a multilevel model to explain the source of firm dependence on government and its relationship with corporate political activity across states. In doing so, we recast the theoretical roles of constructs such as regulatory intensity, which had been invoked as a main effect in prior work. Further, though the original work on resource dependence recognized that dependence per se was not a cause of concern for managers, research has not yet explained what factors transform a dependency from a dormant threat to an active threat that managers attempt to control or eliminate. We extend resource dependence theory by providing a theoretical explanation of dependence threat activation.

Abstract: Sustainability reporting is a strategic tool with which firms communicate to stakeholders embedded in alternative institutional logics. However, we have little understanding of how sustainability reports are produced to achieve this goal. Through an inductive case study of a Hong Kong-based real estate developer, I examine the process of sustainability reporting and explore the structuring of reporting content as coping strategies to multiple institutional logics. The findings reveal that apart from a political and rational approach to sustainability reporting, organizational capacities in terms of cognition and control importantly condition the strategic response to stakeholders. The study is expected to contribute to both literatures in stakeholder management and institutional logics.

Abstract: In corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, grassroots organizations (GROs) are often perceived as non-strategic actors who in the case of a conflict are dependent upon corporations, governments and mainstream nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to gain salience for their issue. Political CSR theorists aim to resolve this power imbalance through the promotion of deliberative processes that include all participants whom affected by the issue. By examining political CSR from GROs’ perspective and conceptualizing the network strategies available to GROs during each stage of an issue life-cycle, we, however, argue that the deliberative processes are much more fragmented, context-dependent, and time-sensitive than has been previously recognized. Thus, we aim to understand the underlying ambiguities, complexities, and uncertainties that demonstrate issues and interactions between firms and GROs in the political CSR context. Our analysis indicates that a general model of deliberative approach towards multi-stakeholders is difficult to establish.