University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

of non-adopters; the moral content of CSR practices may be expected to lend extra
sharpness to such questions.
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However, the institutionalization of CSR is likely to be partial, local, and in a
constant state of negotiation – more so than normal practices. It is arguable that no
CSR practice has been truly institutionalized within a broad organizational field or
even an industry, and certainly not within an international field. Discovery of
unanticipated consequences, and questionable evidence over the economic case
(Utting, 2000; Pedersen, 2007) may result in a de-institutionalization of the CSR
practice (Scott, 2008). The recent withdrawal of pension commitments by firms,
resistance by SMEs to maternity leave (and even stronger resistance to paternity
leave), and the resuscitation of nuclear power as an ‘environmentally-friendly’
technology are examples of this. We suggest that higher levels of societal
involvement and subsequent discursive examination of the principles and practical
applications of CSR make this more likely to happen than less visible, lower profile
organizational practices.
Discussion and Suggestions for Further Research
In this paper, we have identified five adoption phases in the institutionalization of a
CSR practice. We have suggested that, contrary to the traditional path to
institutionalization, the initiatives for CSR practices typically originate outside the
organizational field. Their characterization as part of the social good, as well as the
role of the media in focusing on the issues, tends to transform a theoretical ideal to
the status of best practice or regulatory requirement without it ever having been
worked through the organization. This is often supported by formal institutions such
as governmental regulations or awards, which would normally emerge at a much
later stage in the institutionalization process. This means that the stage of
experimentation and the causal identification of instrumental benefits that occurs at
the early stages of other institutional developments is skipped. We hypothesize that
this may have unanticipated consequences; ‘prizes’ such as the Corporate
Conscience Award, awarded by the US-based Council on Economic Priorities, or a
place on the FTSE 4 Good index, which are intended to promote socially responsible
practices in firms, may not achieve this. The award of the Corporate Conscience
Award and the from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Protection
Award to Enron (Bradley, 2008) appears at least to indicate exogenous coercive
factors that are not as yet properly operational. A focus on the achievement of such
premature awards has the potential to lead to unanticipated consequences (Merton,
1936), such as distracting firms from focusing on their own business strategies
(Porter & Kramer, 2006), or wasting resources on measures of esteem that are at best
inaccurate and at worst misleading.
One distinctive feature of CSR is its idealistic content, which has profound effects
upon practice adoption. At the inception of the practice, it is characterized by a preentrepreneurial
period during which idealism reigns and instrumental considerations
of profit are largely absent. Because of the high levels of public attention that the
idealistic aspects of a CSR practice can attract, its social acceptability is determined
by a broader constituency than an organizational field, and considerations of social