University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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The legislation has also contributed to encourage companies to give social and
environmental information (Moneva 2001), and has forced companies to report on
business activities in the environment, energy saving projects, criteria for evaluating
revenues, environmental contingency plans. In this context, the aim of this paper is to
observe the imitation process in the electricity sector, considering the institutional
conceptual approach.
Below, we shall give a brief theoretical approach and a review of the conceptual
framework from which we have tackled this work. We will describe the method used
to establish the reference and the select the sample. Next, there is a content analysis
of information reported by these companies. The results of the empirical analysis are
presented and discussed in this section, and finally, the main conclusions of the study
are presented.
Background and the Theoretical Framework
Despite the extensive literature written about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
(Crane et al. 2008), and although the concept is not easy to describe, there is no
doubt that so it is clear that at the core of CSR is the idea that it reflects the social
imperatives and the consequence of business success (Matten et al. 2008). Thus, CSR
is a clearly articulated and communicated policy and practices of corporations that
reflect business responsibility for someone of wider societal good (Matten et al.
2008). The role that business plays in society has been the subject of several studies
(Frederick 1987; Wartick et al. 1985; Huntington 1969; Gray et al. 2005).
The company has traditionally been seen as a voluntary association of shareholders
who own it, and the only ones considered in the decision-making process. This
concepts contrasts with the new one which provides the company as an institution,
defined as stable, valued, recurring patterns of behaviour with a great adaptability,
complexity, autonomy and coherence (Huntington, S. 1969), considered as a thriving
business that takes into account different stakeholders, attending and responding to
their long-term interests, being sensitive to the operating structure of the authority
(Selznick 1996).
The organization exists in an institutional environment that defines and delimits
social reality (Selznick 1996), the overall theme of the institutional theory used as a
main argument that the survival of the organization requires both the recognition
performance according to social rules and standards efficient production (Mostaque
et al. 2002).
Thus, the traditional vision of the company shows us as an organization focused on
shareholders, with the sole aim to maximize returns to investors either via dividends
or increasing the value of share (Selznick 1992), the new vision of the organization
as an institution represents a much broader and integral concept. Besides increasing
financial performance, it is also necessary to maximize social and environmental
performance to the same level in order to be a responsible corporation. Identifying
different stakeholders is not enough to be a responsible corporation, it must also
know which are the most significant stakeholders and up to what points their needs
have been integrated into the management and business objective (Freeman et al.
1995; Carroll 1979; Freeman et al. 2004).