Three types of organizational boundary spanning: Predicting CSR policy extensiveness among global consumer products companies

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Alwyn Lim,Shawn Pope
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12266

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:451–470. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  451© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

Company policies are significant objects of management research, not

only as technical materials that codify internal practices, but also as

symbolic structures that articulate the priorities, identities, and val-

ues of organizations to external audiences (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).

In recent decades, particularly with the rise of the corporate social re-

sponsibility (CSR) movement (Waddock, 2008), company policies have

increasingly addressed the social issues, such as those related to work-

ers (Nie, Lämsä, & Pucetaite, 2018), human rights (Renouard & Ezvan,

2018), consumers (Villa Castaño, Perdomo-Ortiz, Duenas Ocampo, &

Duran León, 2016), supply chains (Oka, 2018), and the natural envi-

ronment (Baranova & Meadows, 2017). Policies on these issues are

now ubiquitous on company websites, throughout the dedicated CSR

reports, and even in annual financial disclosures (Bromley & Sharkey,

2017). Indeed, the widespread diffusion of corporate social poli-

cies is the backdrop to a sharp criticism of the CSR movement—that

companies have engaged in CSR merely by changing their policies,

rather than by changing their actual business practices.

Notwithstanding this increased recent attention to CSR, compa-

nies still differ remarkably in their CSR policies. As for contemporary

examples of these differences, Walmart extended its policies in early

2018 to cover paid family leave—a privilege enjoyed by less than 15

percent of private-sector American workers (http://fortu ne.com/

longf orm/us-family-leave-paren tal-leave-activ ists/). Citigroup's pub-

lished code of conduct, detailing many of its ethical policies, runs over

18,000 words (http://www.citig roup.com/citi/inves tor/data/codec on-

duct_en.pdf), whereas Boeing's fits onto a single page (http://www.

boeing.com/resou rces/boein gdotc om/princ iples/ ethics_and_compl

iance/ pdf/engli sh.pdf). Both Amazon and Apple recently received

shareholder proposals to adopt policies to promote board gender di-

versity, with Amazon acceding to new protocols but with Apple resist-

ing and ultimately prevailing in the shareholder vote.

As practic al justification for st udying CSR policies, we not e that

their adoptio n may contribute to long-term posit ive social impacts,

despite critic isms that many CSR poli cies are little mor e than window

Received: 16 Novem ber 2018 

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  Revised: 12 Septe mber 2019 

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  Accepted: 17 Januar y 2020

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12266

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Three types of organizational boundary spanning: Predicting

CSR policy extensiveness among global consumer products

companies

Alwyn Lim1 | Shawn Pope2

Alwyn Lim a nd Shawn Pope cont ributed equa lly to this paper.

1School of Soci al Sciences, Sing apore

Management University, Singapore,

Singapore

2Research Cen ter, Léonard de Vinci Pôl e

Universita ire, Paris La Défe nse, France

Correspondence

Alwyn Lim , School of Social Sci ences,

Singapore Management University, Level

4, 90 Stamford Ro ad, Singapore 178903 ,

Singapore.

Email: alwynlim@smu.edu.sg

Abstract

As part of the ris e of a worldwide corporate social resp onsibility (CSR) movement,

companies have increasin gly incorporated social and envir onmental concerns into

their policies. Th is paper examines the extensi veness of these policies, propos ing

that an underappr eciated contributor is the degree of org anizational boundary span-

ning. The paper is novel in i ntegrating multiple type s of boundary spanning into a

single empirical framework, including product, sub-unit, and national boundary span-

ning. The paper add s complexity to the literature by t heorizing that different t ypes of

boundary spa nning associate with CSR policy exte nsiveness in different issue areas.

The results show th at product spanning associates with C SR policy extensiveness in

the area of consumers , sub-unit spanning in the areas of worker s, and nation-state

spanning in all issue are as. A unique, comprehensive, and gl obal data set of 2,714

prominent consumer goo ds companies in the GoodGuid e database underpins these

findings.

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     LIM and POPE

dressing (Broml ey & Powell, 2012; Hawn & Ioannou, 2016). “Moral

entrapment ” (Haack, Schoenebo rn, & Wickert, 2012) or the “p ara-

dox of empty prom ises” (Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 20 05) are notions

that even token commit ments to CSR policies c an give stakehold-

ers the leverage t o hold companies accounta ble. When CSR policies

among companie s reach a critical mass, a w illingness, and capac ity

on the part of bus inesses to address progr essive social issues may

be signaled to govern ments, potentially le ading to the emergence of

mandatory re gulations (Edelman, Ugge n, & Erlanger, 1999). Lastly,

since CSR polic ies are a fairly objective an d generally publicly avail-

able indicator of b usiness' CSR engagem ent, these policies are of ten

key components of C SR ratings schemes, which may have t angible

consequences for companies, especially when these ratings are con-

sulted by investor s in constructing po rtfolios and consum ers in mak-

ing purchasing de cisions (Flammer, 2013). In short, by an alyzing the

factors tha t lead to the adoption of CSR p olicies, we may achieve

greater under standing of the fac tors that ultimatel y bring about pos-

itive social chan ges.

As for theoret ical contributions, we f ocus in this paper on CSR

policy exte nsiveness, a concept that has b een developing only re-

cently in the CSR literature. CSR policy extensiveness refers to the

range of “different c ategories of environmental and s ocial informa-

tion” that are addr essed by company policies, r ather than just the

mere presence o r absence of a CSR policy that cove rs a single issue

area (Cho, Michel on, Patten, & Robert s, 2015, p. 30). CSR policy e x-

tensiveness rec ognizes that companies have r ecently increased th eir

CSR engageme nt not only in depth, but als o in breadth (Heikkurin en

& Forsman-Hug g, 2011; Yusoff, Mohamad, & Darus, 2013), not

only in scale, b ut also in scope (Sethi, Mar tell, & Demir, 2017, p.

800; Gros bois, 2012). Studying CSR ex tensiveness answers c alls

to approach CS R as an “umbrella” or “fundam entally multidimen-

sional” constr uct that encompasses a v ariety of issue areas (Cos ta

& Menichini, 2013; C apelle-Blancard & Petit , 2017, p. 919; Frynas &

Yamahaki, 2016, p. 261).

More specific ally, we analyze whether comp anies have

wide-ranging C SR policies across the areas of wor kers, consumers,

human rights , supply chains, and the n atural environment . As for the

validity of the se particular issue ar eas, we note that they have un-

derpinned mu ch theoretical (Fr ynas & Yamahaki, 2016) and empir ical

work (Bair, 2017; Bansal, Gao, & Qu reshi, 2014; Groza, Pronsc hinske,

& Walker, 2011; Karp, 2015; Locke, Ameng ual, & Mangla, 2009).

These issue are as are standard dimensi ons of ratings framework s

like CSR-S Monitor (Seth i et al., 2017) and KLD Analyt ics (Capelle-

Blancard & Peti t, 2017), of principles-based C SR frameworks like

the United Natio ns Global Compact ( Wynhoven & Stausberg , 2010),

of standards-ba sed frameworks like the IS O 26000 (Hahn, 2013),

and of transparency-based frameworks like the Global Reporting

Initiative (Toppinen & Korhonen-Kurki, 2013).

As a second the oretical contributio n, we argue that a signifi-

cant factor fo r understanding th e degree of CSR policy ex tensive-

ness is organizational boundary spanning. Organizational boundary

spanning is the sp read of an organization ac ross multiple institu-

tionalized doma ins, which are “complex, soci ally constructed and

negotiated entit ies that have fundamental ef fects on organization al

life” (Heracleo us, 2004, p. 96), including su ch boundaries as those

that separate co mpany sub-units (Teiglan d & Wasklo, 2003), prod uct

categories (Leu ng & Sharkey, 2013), and national borders (Sc hotter,

Mudambi, Doz, & G aur, 2017). The idea of organizationa l bound-

ary spannin g answers calls to introdu ce complexity into the st udy

of CSR, por traying CSR as the outco me of “complex transnational

organizational fields with multiple, diverse, and possibly conflicting

institution al forces” (Aggerholm & Trapp, 2014; Fry nas & Yamahaki,

2016, p. 273; Marano & Kostova , 2016, p. 28; Vashchenko, 2017;

Vaz, Fernandez-Feijo o, & Ruiz, 2016). We note here that many forms

of boundary spanning appear to be on the rise among organizations,

with research showing the increasing spread of organizations across

national borde rs (Pope & Meyer, 2015) and the advent of new o r-

ganizational d esigns to manage a multiplicity of su b-units (Roberts,

2004). Our attention to organizational boundary spanning contrasts

with the domina nt tendency in the CSR li terature to view organi-

zations as more or l ess singular entities th at are well described by

such attribu tes as size and headquarte r country (Orlitzk y, Schmidt,

& Rynes, 200 3). In theorizing a relationshi p between organizationa l

boundary s panning and CSR policy e xtensiveness, we consol idate

prior work by integr ating three diffe rent types of boun dary spanning

into a single empir ical study. While the liter atures on sub-unit, pro d-

uct, and nati on spanning have continued to d eepen, they are seld om

conjoined or related to the outcome of CSR policy extensiveness.

In connectin g and further developing t hese literatures, we posit

a relationship be tween CSR policy ex tensiveness and organi zational

boundary s panning that is not general , but contingent. Rather, we

theorize that boundary-spanning organizations have both incentives

and disincentive s to formalize CSR policies . On the one hand, pol-

icy formalizat ion may bring efficienc ies from standardiza tion, may

coalesce a larger o rganizational identity, and may s ignal the organi-

zation's values to e xternal audiences. On the ot her hand, extensive

CSR policies m ay have the disadvantage of limi ting the autonomy

and flexibility of boundary-spanning organizations' sub-units and

business segme nts (Newton, Ewing, & Col lier, 2014; Orton & Weick,

1990). Cognizant of the se opposing forces, we p ropose that the rela-

tionship bet ween boundary spannin g and CSR policy extensi veness

may depend on the s pecific type of boundar y spanning, which may

engender polic y formalization only in s pecific CSR issue areas .

Turning to our data compo nent, we present the first an alysis of

comprehensive, cross-national measures of the CSR policy exten-

siveness of 2,714 consumer p roducts compani es in the “GoodGuid e”

database (http://www.goodg uide.com/about .). This database covers

the full popula tion of companies whose pr oducts are purchas ed by a

large cross-sec tion of the global cons uming public and for w hom CSR

engagement is like ly to be a salient concern. We const ruct our main

independent v ariables from a wide ran ge of data sources to build

scales that ag gregate various dimensio ns and types of organiz a-

tional boundary spanning. After describing methods and presenting

results, our paper ends by reviewing major theoretical contributions

and discussing p ractical implicat ions for the substantive ar ea of cor-

porate social responsibility.