Measuring Intention: Form and Penetration of Corporate Social Responsibility Principles in India’s Top 100 Corporations

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not new to business practice. The complexity of the global economy and increasing demand for accountability and corporate citizenship1, however, has given it new momentum. The vast body of theoretical and empirical research on the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been selective2 and overwhelmingly Anglo-American in context,3 perhaps because developed Western economies are leaders. There is a growing consensus, however, that CSR does not follow a standardized global template and is crucially shaped by the historical, cultural, institutional, political, and economic legacies of a country or region.4 In this article, I pick a developing country context and use the first segment of Wood‟s structural corporate social performance (CSP) model to measure corporate social responsibility motivation. Wood calls this construct corporate social responsibility principles that “expresses something fundamental that people believe is true, or is a basic value that motivates people to act” (1991:695). In specific, I will examine: What principles guide voluntary accountability among leading corporations in India? How do these principles vary by industrial sector and institutional ownership? An in-depth study of CSR principles in India will add to existing scholarship in the political science, public policy, strategic management, and sociology disciplines on several dimensions. First, it will present an empirically observed reality of how cultural and institutional contexts shape CSR values in a developing country. Second, my analysis of CSR motivation at the firm, and industry level can serve as a functional model of CSR trajectory in a developing country and as a benchmark for cross-country comparisons in future research. Third, studying India is of substantive importance given that it is projected to wield considerable political and economic clout and potentially challenge the traditional dominance of Western economies in the near future. Fourth, in addition to adding to the emerging literature on the political economy of CSR, knowledge produced through this study can also be integrated with existing literature and make understanding of CSR more representative