Strategic Corporate Responsibility

Abstract

Increasing number of studies supports the positive impact of corporate responsibility (CR) in long-term perspective and for securing sustainable performance (e.g. Freeman, 2000; McElhaney, 2008; Hollander, 2008), moreover several recent studies (see Carroll, 2010; Hansen and Reichwald, 2009; Googins et al., 2009) found that organisations which performed according to their principles and core values were significantly less influenced by the economic recession and were able to restore their business easier than those who cut corners or neglected ethics and / or responsibility in their activities. Therefore we can argue that corporate responsibility is a key to sustainable performance and helps organisations to survive and succeed through turbulent times. However it is suggested that corporate responsibilities activities are sustainable only when they are tightly linked to the core business goals (Schreck, 2009) and are lead strategically (e.g. Mele and Guillen, 2006). Jonker and de Witte (2006) maintain that although the roots of corporate responsibility are strong, the strategic approach is still relatively new. The discussion is illustrated with a brief overview of a study among Estonian organisations. The purpose of our study is to find out whether and how CR is related to strategic management, business objectives and leadership competences, and whether the responsible activities of an organisation correspond to the attributes of strategic corporate responsibility (SCR). The study is conducted among Estonian organisations who took part in Responsible Business Index (RBI) study in 2009 and 2010 (csr.ee homepage), research methods are combined, including analysis of the RBI questionnaires, the organisations’ home-pages, annual reports and personal conversations with organisations’ representatives.