RESPONSE - Insead

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Methodology Case comparison Analysis Step 4: Stakeholder interviews followed a structured approach. This allowed for a systematic comparison of the observations made with those coming from the managers of the focal company, as well as within and across pairs (see Exhibits 2 and 3 for the interview protocols). Step 5: Internal interviews were scheduled with the help of the CSR managers championing the project in the company. The selection of interviewees was guided by a fixed number of functional areas and geographic coverage that we developed by design: these included the CEO or COO, managers with direct responsibility for CSR (usually interviews during the “fact finding” field visit), the heads of selected corporate areas such as strategy or marketing strategy, HR, finance, one executive in charge of a product division and four country managers representing territories outside the home region in four of the following areas: Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, North America and China. The majority of interviews with company managers involved people with functional and line responsibilities. Only 18.4 percent of company interviews involved individuals with direct CSR responsibilities (see Figure 4). In total, 427 interviews were conducted. This included 208 interviews with managers of the partner companies and 219 interviews with external stakeholders. 3.4 Case comparison Analysis 3.4.1 Measures and Analysis Protocol Figure 4: : Overview of Manager Interviews Line/ operational 34% CSR 18% Functional 48% N =208 The desk research, factfinding fieldwork and the structured interview protocol were designed to elicit information that could be used in comparative analysis between and across companies in the pairs/triads. Interview protocols were developed for managers and stakeholders. For managers, questions were centred around the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and specifically in their industry, the relevance of CSR to their work and daytoday management processes, their perception of their own firm’s social performance relative to that of competitors, the identification of relevant stakeholders – including a ranking of these stakeholders according to their impact on the company and the company’s impact on them and their motivation for engaging in CSR. These interviews were recorded and generally lasted between oneandahalf and two hours. Many of the questions posed to managers were replicated in the stakeholder interviews. For example, stakeholders were asked to define the responsibilities of companies towards society and in the industry of interest, to benchmark the social performance of the focal firm against its competitors, to identify the relevant stakeholders for the firm (with the same ranking exercise as conducted in the managerial interviews), and to provide information on their interactions with the firm. This replication of the important questions in both sets of interviews gave us a solid basis for the calculation of the cognitive alignment between managers and stakeholders. Table 6 below summarises the constructs used to categorise the dimensions of relevance in the comparisons between firms. RESPONSE: understanding and responding to societal demands on corporate responsibility 28
Methodology Case comparison Analysis Table 6. Constructs used for case comparison Firm’s CSP Firm’s CSR process Firm’s motivation Individuals’ cognition Company characteristics Construct Measurements Corporate Social Performance Strategic CSR commitment Organisation of CSR CSR practices Business case Values case Institutional case Social consciousness Cognitive gaps Origins Source: Derived from case analysis protocol. Agency ratings, stakeholder evaluation, RESPONSE evaluation Top management articulation of support for CSR; integration of CSR into mission/vision statement, strategic decisionmaking and business processes Centralised or decentralised; extent of influence; input from staff; historical evolution Stakeholder engagement; performance targets; appraisal; training; reporting; monitoring, CSR in investment decisions Perceived benefits of CSR in terms of risk reduction, efficiency, sales and premium pricing, new market opportunities. Perceived importance of individuals’ and organisation’s values Norms and pressures at the level of the industry sector, regulation, competition. Psychological attributes in terms of cognitive capacities, personal values and emotional characteristics. Magnitude of differences in manager and stakeholder understandings regarding CSR definitions, performance and motivations. Influence of founders and early corporate culture. Current position Articulation of business strategy Organisational structure; independence of corporate governance; concentration of ownership; leadership style; corporate culture, knowledge management Interview data were collected for each firm against a large number of structured dimensions, as summarised in Table 6. This largely qualitative information was then scored on a scale of 15. We adopted a process of open scoring, where each item to be scored could be given any value within the range. We defined the reference population for the scoring as our sample of 19 firms (i.e. the highest performers in a given domain scored 4 or 5, while the worst scored 1 or 2). Based on the quantitative data in the interviews, some of the dimensions (e.g. firm’s motivation to engage in CSR) could be scored objectively, while some other scores were more subjective. In these latter cases, researchers were asked to justify their scores, and there was a check for interscorer reliability. The scoring mechanism was necessary to enable comparison between companies in a pair or triad, as well as across pairs and triads. So, for example, if one firm scored highly (5) on its strategic commitment to CSR and the other firm in the pair scored low (2), the difference in levels is considered of important magnitude. Therefore, if the former firm has a higher CSR performance rating than the latter, then the variable ‘strategic commitment’ could be a potentially significant factor in explaining this difference, at least in the context of the industry being considered. If this conclusion is drawn on a large number of industry pairs/triads, then the variable under consideration is deemed an important factor to explain the variation in CSP (see below in 4.5). RESPONSE: understanding and responding to societal demands on corporate responsibility 29
Page 1 and 2: SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY
Page 3 and 4: Contents Executive summary 6 1 Intr
Page 5 and 6: Tables Table 1. Typology of factors
Page 7 and 8: Executive summary Recommendations c
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Page 13 and 14: Introduction Aims of this study “
Page 15 and 16: PART I: CSR AND COGNITIVE ALIGNMENT
Page 17 and 18: A model of cognitive alignment and
Page 25 and 26: Methodology Scope 3 Methodology 3.1
Page 27: Methodology Company case studies Th
Page 31 and 32: Methodology CrossPair Comparison
Page 33 and 34: Findings: Managers’ understanding
Page 45 and 46: Findings: External factors and cogn
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Page 59 and 60: A Model of Social Consciousness and
Page 65 and 66: Methodology Experiment Settings 8.3
Page 67 and 68: Methodology Experiment Protocols ev
Page 69 and 70: Findings: Developing Social Conscio
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Conclusions from study findings Dev
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