Theory Assessment and Agenda Setting in Political CSR: A Critical Theory Perspective

• Author: Andreas Georg Scherer
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12137

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 387–410 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12137

Theory Assessment and Agenda Setting in

Political CSR: A Critical Theory

Perspective

Andreas Georg Scherer

University of Zurich, Universit¨

atsstrasse 84, CH-8006, Zurich, Switzerland

Email: andreas.scherer@uzh.ch

Frynas and Stephens (Political corporate social responsibility: reviewing theories and

setting new agendas. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, pp. 483–509,

2015) reviewed the literature on political corporate social responsibility (CSR). They

described existing trends and suggested an agenda forfuture research. They attempted

to develop ‘a more inclusive pluralist research agenda in political CSR, which can

integrate different perspectives on political CSR in order to account for different phe-

nomena, including global governance changes at macro level, instrumental concerns

at organizational level or cognitive dimensions at individual level, in both descriptive

and normative terms’. This was an ambitious endeavour, given the rapid growthof the

literature and the extensive heterogeneity of the field. There is much to like in Frynas

and Stephens’ paper, as it spans a broad range of perspectives and links together dis-

crete research topics. In the presentreview, however, the author focuses on a number of

critical aspects in their argument. Frynas and Stephens failed to define core concepts,

to reveal their normativestance on CSR and their paradigmatic position, or to address

the inherent conflict of values in political CSR. And they were too optimistic about

the possibilities and benefits of ‘integration’. The author suspects that their approach,

when adopted in practice, will impede rather than promote social welfare. This paper

starts with a brief summary of the field and continues by emphasizing critical issues in

Frynas and Stephens’ analysis. It concludes with an alternative agendafor research in

political CSR.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might

not get there. (Yogi Berra, baseball legend)

(Berra 2002, p. 53)

I am happy to mention the following individuals and institu-

tions for their kind support, without which this project would

not have been possible: IJMR Editor-in-Chief Ossie Jones

has encouraged me to write this paper and,together with very

constructive anonymousreviewers, he gave invaluableadvice

during the review process; Emilio Marti (London), Anselm

Schneider (Stockholm), Christian Voegtlin (Zurich) and Glen

Whelan (Copenhagen) provided very helpful comments on

previous drafts of the manuscript; and the Swiss National

Science Foundation is supporting the ongoing project ‘When

Individuals Become Social Innovators: Investigating Social

Innovative Behavior and its Individual and Contextual Pre-

conditions’ (Project No. 100010_165699/1) from which the

present paper benefits. Thank you all!

Introduction: the emergence of

political corporate social responsibility

In the past decade, the political dimension of cor-

porate social responsibility (CSR) has been studied

intensively. Various theoretical perspectives and nu-

merous empirical studies have been published (for re-

views, see Frynas and Stephens 2015; Rasche 2015;

Scherer et al. 2016). Today, the field is fragmented and

ranges from normative research on the ethical impli-

cations of corporate engagement with public policy to

descriptive or instrumental research that explains cor-

porate influence on the regulatory environment. In re-

cent years, proponents of different perspectives have

started a dialogue (den Hond et al. 2014; Liedong

et al. 2015; Rajwani and Liedong 2015; Rasche 2015;

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388 A.G. Scherer

Scherer and Palazzo 2011). The review paper by

Frynas and Stephens (2015) is an important contri-

bution to the debate. Frynas and Stephens take stock

of the field and propose a future research agenda for

political CSR. Although their endeavour is welcome,

one can see limitations in their argument. Therefore,

this paper questions Frynas and Stephens’ approach

because of its conceptual ambiguity and normative

vacuity and proposes an alternative agenda for re-

search. It briefly describes the field, unfolds the cri-

tique and develops an alternative based on Scherer

and Palazzo (2007, 2011) and other proponents of

political CSR. The present paper goes beyond that

literature, as (a) it is explicitly engaged with corpo-

rate political activity (CPA) scholarship, with Frynas

and Stephens (2015) as an important example, (b)

the paper is broader, in that it also concerns domes-

tic companies and public issues that do not have a

transnational character, and (c) it explores further the

concept of ‘politics’.

The relationship between corporations and the po-

litical system is an important topic (Boddewyn 2003;

Boddewyn and Brewer1994; Doh et al. 2015; Scherer

et al. 2014). On the one hand, the political system de-

fines the institutional context in which corporations

are embedded and also incentivizes or restricts cor-

porate behaviour (Jackson and Deeg 2008). On the

other hand, corporations influence the institutional

context by various means, becoming political actors

themselves (Hillman et al. 2004). Thus, corporations

are not entirely separate from but, rather, also part

of the political system, inasmuch as they assume a

political role (Scherer et al. 2014). This complex re-

lationship and the essence of the political role of cor-

porations have been discussed in various subfields

of management studies. Corporate political activity

(Hillman et al. 2004; Lawton et al. 2013), political

CSR (Scherer and Palazzo 2007, 2011) and corporate

citizenship (Matten and Crane 2005) are important

research streams in this discussion that differ in how

they conceive of the political role of corporations

and how and in what interest scholarship should con-

tribute to shape this role.

Research on CPAfocuses on the non-market strate-

gies of business firms and explores how companies

influence the political system (Hillman et al. 2004;

Lawton et al. 2013; Rajwani and Liedong 2015). The

assumption of CPA research is that firms are mo-

tivated exclusively by their economic interests and

engage with the political system only in order to gain

economic benefits and/or to further their competi-

tive positions (Baysinger 1984; Hillman et al. 2004).

Researchers empirically explore the factors that ex-

plain the political strategies of corporations and their

success in determining the political environment or

influencing public policy. The theoretical founda-

tions, context conditions and methods of CPA are

quite coherent, resulting in a relatively homogeneous

body of research (Hillman et al. 2004; Lawton et al.

2013). Corporate political activity is the scholarly

homebase of Frynas and Stephens’ (2015) endeav-

our, from which they try to integrate the other ap-

proaches. The instrumental perspective of CPA, how-

ever, has been criticized by scholars who emphasize

the responsibility of business in contributing to social

and environmental well-being (Mantere et al. 2009;

Matten 2009; Rasche 2015; Scherer and Palazzo

2011; Scherer et al. 2013, 2016).

Unlike CPA, CSR goes beyond corporate interests

and is more directly concerned with public welfare.

Corporations assume responsibility by providing pos-

itive impacts on society and avoiding the negative.

This is reflected in McWilliams and Siegel’s (2001,

p. 117) definition of CSR as ‘actions that appear

to further some social good, beyond the interest of

the firm and that which is required by law’. How-

ever, CSR literature is inconclusive as to what ac-

tually motivates firms to ‘further some social good’

or at least to ‘appear’ to be doing so (van Aaken

et al. 2013; B´

enabou and Tirole 2010; Kitzmueller

and Shimshack 2012). Corporate social responsibil-

ity can be explained by economic calculations and in-

strumental reasoning (McWilliams and Siegel 2001,

Whelan 2012), by intrinsic motivation for altruistic

and pro-social behaviour (Baron 2010; B´

enabou and

Tirole 2003), by institutional pressures (Campbell

2007; Lim and Tsutsui 2012) or by NGO activities

(Baron and Diermeier 2007).

At closer inspection, it shows that the quest for the

motivation of CSR behaviour is not the only matter

of disagreement, as there are (1) different ideological

assumptions on whether CSR research is to be un-

derstood as a positive or normative discipline, i.e. a

discipline that explains observable phenomena or a

discipline that prescribes certain behaviour, and there

are (2) various social theories with different ontologi-

cal, epistemological and methodological assumptions

that are advanced in the field of CSR. This has led

to considerable fragmentation in the CSR literature

(Garriga and Mel´

e 2004; Scherer and Palazzo 2007;

Windsor 2006). As a result, CSR is very broadly

defined and has been used as an ‘umbrella term’

(Blowfield and Frynas 2005; Frynas and Stephens

2015; Rasche 2015; Scherer and Palazzo 2007) for

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