csbCSR "Brown Bag" Research Seminar: Mette Morsing & Anne Roepsdorff
CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility
Invitation to join our cbsCSR Brown Bag Research Seminar Series
Authors:
Mette Morsing, Professor, CBSCSR &
Anne Roepsdorff, Assist.Prof. CBSCSR
Discussant:
Jette Steen Knudsen, Assoc.Prof. LPF
Corporate CSR as a Political Responsibility:
A Case Study of Corporate Citizenship in IKEA
Abstract
This paper (which is a work-in-progress) explores how a company via its
CSR activity takes on a political responsibility in society. CSR is generally
defined as corporations’ social and environmental responsibilities in
society, and in this paper we suggest that CSR also entails a political
responsibility. While practitioners and researchers on CSR have focussed
on identifying the “business case” for a social and environmental
responsibility, they have overlooked or rejected the idea that a corporate
CSR engagement implies a political activity.
Drawing on corporate citizenship research, we study how a
corporation takes on what used to be the government’s political task:
namely, the administration of individuals’ citizenship rights. We observe
how a corporate CSR policy unavoidably becomes entangled in global and
national politics on citizenship rights. We base our exploration on a case
study of IKEA’s CSR policy, that was explicitly emphasizing a political
neutrality, as we show how IKEA’s CSR policy both strategically and
unintendedly finds itself at the epicentre of a heated national political
debate about diversity and integration of ethnic and religious minorities.
We contribute to the political science-oriented research on
corporate citizenship by providing a micro-organizational level analysis,
and we demonstrate how a corporate CSR policy implies a corporate take
up of traditional government functions of civil and political rights. We
discuss how the administration of civil and political citizenship rights is not
only an issue of high importance in developing countries but is also a
growing tendency in strong welfare states, and we discuss the managerial
implications of such corporate engagement in CSR as a political practice.
Key-words
Corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate citizenship, civil and
political rights, case study, IKEA
The full paper is available: write gj.ikl@cbs.dk.
Registration is recommended, though not necessary. with gj.ikl@cbs.dk
Feel free to bring your own lunch bag.