University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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• Values and cultural factors – e.g. behavioural norms or cultural traditions as
well as traditional authority structures; or legal institutional or established
systems for example regarding employees´ participation
• Business commitment – e.g. confidentiality of provided company information
in competitive economic environments; openness to participative way of
management: willingness and company-structures prepared to accept
decisions taken in such an dialogic co-decision process
• Stakeholder commitment – e.g. civil society actors being prepared to being
involved (organisation level, willingness, available financial and personnel
resources);
• Contextual/special factors – e.g. difficult to involve stakeholders due to
nomadic lifestyles or illiteracy; languages (in global supply chains and
multicultural settings); spatial distance (e.g. need to involve stakeholders of
remote and rural areas)
What is described above is an ideal process of participatory evaluation of CSR. The
just outlined challenges and potential barriers need to be addressed by anybody
aiming for implementing such a process. A participatory evaluation process of CSR
needs to establish a trustful environment and professionally facilitated by
experienced researchers or practitioners as poor implementation of such a process
(raising unrealistic expectations, lack of involvement of the relevant stakeholders,
unbalance of powers in the process and regarding outcomes, lack of company
commitment,...) will destroy trust which is the basic ingredient for all human
relations, thus also for company-stakeholder relations. A substantial and effective
contribution of companies through their CSR activities to sustainable development
would then be impossible.
Conclusions
This paper aimed for providing a conceptual framework for participatory evaluation
of CSR. CSR was introduced as a business contribution to sustainable development.
Moreover the societal relations between states, companies and civil society were
introduced under the concept of New Societal Governance whereby the traditional
boundaries of the three societal actors are newly defined. States are less commanding
and powerful through legislation, companies take over domains formerly
administered by states and civil society claims its stakes regarding transparency,
participation and co-decision-making in relation to both other societal actors. Given
that situation a set of challenges and needs of CSR being able to contribute to
sustainable development is derived. CSR-for-SD needs to tackle the complexity and
contextuality of CSR as well as to facilitate the development of trust, collective
action and mutual responsibility among all actors involved.
The current dominant forms of CSR – CSR reporting and stakeholder dialogue –
were then presented and analysed regarding their capability to address the challenges
and needs of CSR-for-SD. Current dominant forms CSR reporting were found to be
too technical and instrumental, and current forms of stakeholder dialogue were found