Contributions published at Foundations of Business Administration and Theories of the Firm (Andreas Scherer)

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The implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is crucial for the legitimacy of an organization in today’s globalized economy. This study aims to enrich our knowledge of the implementation of the largest voluntary CSR initiative—the UN Global Compact (UNGC). Drawing on insights from stakeholder, network, and institutional theory, I derive a positive impact of UNGC participation duration on the implementation level of the UNGC principles, despite potential weaknesses in the initiative’s accountability structure. Moreover, I scrutinize the validity of the newly introduced UNGC “Differentiation Programme” before applying this framework in the empirical analysis. Results from ordinal, linear, and instrumental variable regression models suggest that, contrary to claims made by UNGC critics, the duration of UNGC participation does affect the level of UNGC implementation. However, this effect appears to be much smaller than previous practitioner studies have suggested. Moreover, strong local UNGC networks affect the implementation level of the UNGC positively. Their hypothesized moderating role between UNGC participation duration and UNGC implementation level, however, is only significant in networks with activities of high quality rather than high quantity.

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Die Korruption ist seit vielen Jahren ein grosses Problem der Wirtschaft. Sie ist in jedem Land vorhanden, wobei die Korruption in Entwicklungsländern extreme Ausmasse annimmt. Din multinationalen Unternehmen (MNU) stehen im Fokus der Medien, wenn es um Korruptionsskandale geht. Im Laufe der Globalisierung tretten vermehrt auch kleine und mittelständige Unternehmen (KMU) international auf. Der Druck der Öffentlichkeit bezüglich der Korruption nimmt zu, was sowohl die multinationalen, als auch die kleinen und mittelständigen Unternehmen zum Handeln drängt. Die Etablierung einer Anti-Korruptionsstrategie stellt die Unternehmen vor grosse Herausforderungen. Diese Arbeit liefert einen Einblick in die Anti-Korruptionsstrategien von KMUs. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf dem Einfluss von Emotionen bei den jeweiligen Strategien. In dieser Arbeit wird ein reaktiver und ein proaktiver Weg aufgezeigt, welchen die Unternehmen gehen können. Anhand einer qualitativen Analyse wird dabei der Einfluss von Emotionen auf die gewählten Wege betrachtet. In der qualitativen Analyse behandle ich zum Einen ein KMU, welches intrinsisch motiviert ist eine Anti-Korruptionsstrategie aufzubauen und zum Anderen ein KMU, welches von einem multinationalen Unternehmen afiliiert ist. Die Resultate der Analyse zeige ich gegen Ende dieser Arbeit in einem Modell auf.

Korrupte Aktivitäten stellen für KMUs im Vergleich zu anderen Gesetzwidrigkeiten eine der grössten Gefahren dar (Werner, Rabl, & Albrecht, 2017). Dazu betreiben KMUs Rationalisierungen, die das Risiko, in unethisches Verhalten involviert zu sein, zusätzlich erhöhen (Schembera & Scherer, 2017a). Da KMUs jedoch einen geringen Bekanntheitsgrad aufweisen, scheinen sie vor einer Überprüfung durch die Öffentlichkeit bezüglich ethischer Aspekte ausgeschlossen zu sein und geniessen daher die kognitive Legitimität, die ihnen zugesprochen wird (Schembera & Scherer, 2017a). Die vorliegende Arbeit analysiert, welche Anforderungen zur Anti-Korruption an KMUs nach dem Sieben-Säulen-Modell von Zentes (2017) in einer bilateralen Geschäftsbeziehung zu einem MNU gestellt und mit welchen Ansprüchen KMUs im Vergleich dazu bei der Beteiligung an einer Collective Action gegen Korruption konfrontiert werden. Zusätzlich werden diese Anti-Korruptions- Massnahmen anhand des Sieben-Säulen-Modells bewertet. Die Grenzen dieser Arbeit liegen darin, dass nicht alle MNUs und Collective Actions analysiert werden können. Daher wird das Unternehmen Siemens, das bereits einen Korruptionsskandal durchleben musste, als MNU zur Analyse herangezogen sowie eine thailändische Collective Action, die in einem korrupten Umfeld versucht den Unternehmen Anti-Korruptionsthemen näherzubringen. Somit werden zwei Organisationen untersucht, die sich aktiv mit dem Thema Korruptionsprävention auseinandersetzen. Schlussfolgernd ergeben die Resultate, dass KMUs aus einer Beteiligung an einer Collective Action mehr Anforderungen nach Zentes (2017) begegnen, wobei auch MNUs eine Vielzahl an Anforderungen stellen.

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The case deals with the issue of child labor in the international cocoa supply chain using Nestle as an example. The case begins when two friends, Simon and Linda, get into a public disagreement over a Nestle Kit Kat bar at a supermarket checkout. On the one hand, Simon is convinced that consumers ought to boycott Nestle by refraining from buying their products until the company eradicates child labor from its supply chain. On the other, Linda believes that Nestle cannot eradicate child labor, as the situation is far more complex; this leaves her skeptical of what she sees as Simon’s oversimplification of the matter. This leads to the central contention, which the case seeks to help participants deal with in future situations, namely: how to reconcile normative ideals with empirical conditions. Simon’s radical recommendation of boycotting Nestle is rooted in the normative ideal that children should not work at all, while Linda empathizes with Nestle based on the empirical conditions that make it impossible for Nestle as a company to single-handedly eradicate child labor. The case study gives participants a practical tool with which they can address complex ethical problems, taking into consideration both norms as well as the empirical conditions. It helps them to create a complete ethical argument in business ethics. Such a tool offers a pragmatic approach to addressing ethical organizational issues in a manner that takes both the ideals and the reality into account without ignoring one or the other.

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Innovations in health care are costly and risky, but they also provide the opportunity for hospitals to increase quality of care, to distinguish themselves from competitors and to attract patients. While numerous hospitals strive to increase their innovativeness by adopting a costly innovation leader strategy, the question of whether this actually influences the patient’s choice remains unanswered. To understand the role of innovativeness from the patient perspective, this study conceptualizes the construct of innovativeness reputation of hospitals and determines its relevance in patients’ hospital choice decisions. In the pretest, we identified six dimensions of innovativeness reputation such as progressive work procedures and value added services. We then used three different quantitative multi-criteria decision-making methods to evaluate the relative importance of innovativeness reputation in patient choice. We collected data from 355 former German patients who had undergone elective non-emergency surgery. Overall, innovativeness reputation accounts for 11.6%–16.8% of the patient decision. Innovativeness reputation has a moderate influence on hospital choice and should be taken into account by managers. Since technical innovations are costly, hospitals should use other means to enhance their innovative image. Strategies such as emphasizing value added services can enable hospitals to increase their innovativeness reputation efficiently.

Frynas and Stephens (Political corporate social responsibility: reviewing theories and setting new agendas. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, pp. 483–509, 2015) reviewed the literature on political corporate social responsibility (CSR). They described existing trends and suggested an agenda for future research. They attempted to develop ‘a more inclusive pluralist research agenda in political CSR, which can integrate different perspectives on political CSR in order to account for different phenomena, including global governance changes at macro level, instrumental concerns at organizational level or cognitive dimensions at individual level, in both descriptive and normative terms’. This was an ambitious endeavour, given the rapid growth of the literature and the extensive heterogeneity of the field. There is much to like in Frynas and Stephens’ paper, as it spans a broad range of perspectives and links together discrete research topics. In the present review, however, the author focuses on a number of critical aspects in their argument. Frynas and Stephens failed to define core concepts, to reveal their normative stance on CSR and their paradigmatic position, or to address the inherent conflict of values in political CSR. And they were too optimistic about the possibilities and benefits of ‘integration’. The author suspects that their approach, when adopted in practice, will impede rather than promote social welfare. This paper starts with a brief summary of the field and continues by emphasizing critical issues in Frynas and Stephens’ analysis. It concludes with an alternative agenda for research in political CSR.

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