A Chilean pattern of CSR? An Institutional Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility in Chile

Today there is increasing pressure for international businesses to take into account their impact on societies in the countries where they operate and adopt CSR initiatives. However, several authors argue that international firms would not simply impose the same CSR initiatives across different national contexts, but that they would adapt to different nation-level institutions. Matten and Moon (2008) in their influential research initially proposed that differences in CSR would emerge based on institutional and national settings, while Ioannou and Serafeim (2012) suggested that there are institutional drivers shaped by different building blocks within a national business system, which would affect CSR patterns in firms. To date, research about how different country contexts shape the practice of CSR has been concentrated in developed countries in the global North, while such research in Latin America has been deemed “a lonely challenge”. Chile is a particularly interesting country to study within Latin America due to its unique institutional setting and since it is considered to be the most developed country in the Latin American region. Drawing on research by Matten and Moon (2008) and Ioannou and Serafeim (2012), this dissertation aims to consider how much institutional configurations shape CSR in Chile and whether we can therefore see a national pattern of CSR. It aims to do this by qualitatively analysing the CSR patterns which emerge from the company reports of the top 50 businesses operating in Chile This piece of research finds that in Chile there are some national patterns of CSR beginning to emerge, however, at present, international pressures and pressures from different business sectors shape the pattern of CSR in Chile more significantly than nation-level institutions. This may be because in the particular context of Chile, institutions are weak and CSR is still in its infancy, which could be why nation-level institutions do not play as much of a role in shaping patterns of CSR as might be seen in more developed countries in the global North