The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy on the Real Practice

This paper reports a cross cultural survey of managerial perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility policies and practices. Results indicates a perceived difference between national (UK, China, European non – UK) groups in several respects. There are differences in the shared understandings and knowledge of the concept. Of particular interest are differences in the expectations of responsibility for CSR and differences in the dimension of voluntarism vs. organisational regulation. The paper is an early analysis of work still in progress and discusses the implications of these differences for establishing links between CSR practices, business strategy and managerial behaviours in a global context. Although many experts testify to the importance of developing a knowledge base in this area, the literature is still in the formative stages of providing conceptual models and applications that translate into effective practices for business executives. This research adopts a largely ‘appreciative enquiry ’ stance, in asking managers to articulate the links between corporate policy and their individual practice of management. A model is suggested which offers a typology of levels of CSR related behaviours displayed by managers in organisations