Corporate Social Responsibility:

Chapter 10: Developing CSR Strategy

Links to Further Reading

Burke, L. & Logsdon, J. M. 1996. How corporate social responsibility pays off. Long Range Planning, 29(4): 495-502.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0024-6301(96)00041-6

This is a classic article that provides a useful understanding of just how CSR programmes can create strategic benefits for firms. It identifies five factors – centrality, specificity, proactivity, voluntarism, and visibility – which help to assess how value is created by CSR initiatives from a strategy point of view.

Porter, M. E. & Kramer, M. R. 2006. Strategy and society: the link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility. Harvard Business Review, December: 78-92.

http://hbr.org/2006/12/strategy-and-society-the-link-between-competitive-advantage-and-corporate-social-responsibility/ar/1

This is a follow-up piece to the reading by the same authors in Chapter 7, but rather than just focusing on philanthropy, here they also consider competitive strategy more broadly.

Links to Practice

CWS 10.1: Visit the Companion Website for more examples of CSR strategies

Lundbeck, a Danish international pharmaceutical company specializing in brain disorders, presents its Corporate Responsibility scorecard as part of its CSR strategy: http://www.lundbeck.com/global/corporate-responsib/report/our-targets
Metropolitan Police Service, the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement in London, UK, presents its 2010-2013 CSR strategy: http://www.met.police.uk/about/documents/csr_strategy.pdf
(Article) “Apple and the ‘Little Dutch Boy’ Strategy”, this article from the Harvard Business Review blog discusses the reactive nature of Apple’s CSR strategy: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/apple_and_the_little_dutch_boy.html

CWS 10.2: Visit the Companion Website for more on Danone’s approach to integrating CSR into its strategy.

Danone ‘Building a Better World’, information on Danone’s CSR strategy can be found here: http://www.danone.co.uk/BetterWorld/
(Video) Grameen Danone Food Project, this video discussed Danone’s operations in Bangladesh and highlights a strategic approach to CSR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDkTDcI53hg