Corporate Social Responsibility management is often in place for safeguarding the reputation of the company, i.e. serving as a marketing tool. However, integrated in the core of the business, CSR could actually help to reduce... [ view full abstract ]
Corporate Social Responsibility management is often in place for safeguarding the reputation of the company, i.e. serving as a marketing tool. However, integrated in the core of the business, CSR could actually help to reduce the negative impacts of the company’s activities, and guide the company through the growing environmental and social challenges. Decision-makers (at certain management levels) of the company have a great power to change the direction of the whole business and, therefore, to improve the impact that it has on social, environmental and economic ecosystems. Numerous factors from inside and outside of the company influence the decision-making processes related to CSR. Thus, it is necessary to understand the decision-making for sustainability in companies by looking at their CSR management practices. The goal of this research is to understand, who or what drives the integration of sustainability in the core business of the company. The research targets medium-sized companies (revenue between €50 mill and €300 mill; at least 250 employees) in Austria for two reasons: first, it is expected that these companies will have – compared to smaller companies – enough resources at hand, public attention that could help them to manage sustainability topics in a formal way, and the influence in and of their stakeholder networks. Second, larger companies (being multinational and/or holding companies) have a centralized decision-making process for CSR in place which is most likely different from the decision-making processes of the sample analyzed in this research. It is assumed that three aspects describe the driving force of sustainability integration in the core business: persons in charge, their motivation and the relevance of sustainability topics of interest. Consequently, one part of the survey was dedicated to locating the decision maker(s) for sustainability in the company, i.e. finding the responsible persons for sustainability topics, and looking at the involvement and/or influence of the rest of the company’s departments on the CSR management practices. The second part of the survey explored the motivation behind the CSR management, looking both, at the requests from stakeholders as well as other internal and external influential factors. In the third part, we asked companies, which sustainability topics they currently manage, and what which topics they plan to address in future with their activities. The initial sample of 638 companies after excluding companies that were not reachable, or are following groups’ CSR strategy (“doubles”), shrunk to 566 companies, from which 60 answered the survey, providing 51 valid entries about their CSR management practices. The participants of the survey represent companies of various sizes and industries. Besides the descriptive analysis of the data, some statistical correlations in data will be tested and conclusions will be presented.
Keywords: CSR, Decision-making, corporate sustainability survey, medium-sized companies, Austrian companies
5a. Corporate sustainability and CSR
