Are the businesses getting enough bang for their buck when it comes to CSR?

International research project is to examine the effects of CSR

CSR is more than just marketing, or is it? An international group consisting of 17 European research institutions is going to examine the impact of corporate CSR. CBS Associate Professor Jette Steen Knudsen, the Department of International Economics and Management, is one of the researchers. She points out that even though CSR has been a corporate concept for a long time, focus has changed from marketing advantages to an explicit improvement of the business over the past few years.

- Many businesses today talk about business-driven CSR, where the purpose of CSR is to benefit the core business. Earlier on, the businesses considered CSR as philanthropy or marketing, but today, many businesses view CSR as a way to reduce corporate risks and maybe even as a way to create new business opportunities. Today’s businesses use many resources on CSR, and it is a widely discussed topic. The effects of CSR, however, have never truly been examined, Jette Steen Knudsen says.

More CSR regulations

The fact that businesses hire CSR Managers shows the growing influence of CSR, and several countries like Denmark, Sweden, France and the UK have implemented soft CSR regulations. In Denmark, the government has introduced a plan of action for social responsibility, which means that today’s businesses have to account for their responsibility in the annual report.

Research goals

The IMPACT project will examine the effects of CSR with regards to corporate competitiveness, growth, employment and environmental measures. Research will be conducted on a number of levels: corporate, industry, national and EU level. The researchers will examine CSR efforts in the building, IT, retail, textile and clothing industries. Are CSR efforts a central part of the business operations, or is CSR just a footnote? Furthermore, it is to be examined whether or not the countries use CSR in the same manner.

- We will analyse under which circumstances CSR is beneficial to a business, and when CSR is not appropriate. In that way we hope to be able to provide businesses with useful guidance concerning the effective use of CSR. Furthermore, we want to examine if corporate CSR is beneficial to society, or if these measures have unintended negative consequences, Jette Steen Knudsen explains.

The project starts in March 2010. Jette Steen Knudsen is in the project management group with particular focus on development of specific recommendations for businesses.