Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not a new phenomenon. For example, Smith (2003) outlined how Sit Titus Salt founded the company town of Saltaire in the nineteenth century in order to provide his employees with better working conditions than the alternatives available at the time. However, what has emerged as a new reality in CSR is the range of stakeholder expectations that managers must incorporate into their planning (Clarkson, 1995; Dawkins and Lewis, 2003; Harrison and Freeman, 1999; Neville and Menguc, 2006). Salt, for example, was perhaps motivated by altruism for his employees, or perhaps rationalized that happy employees are more productive and thus provide economic benefits. He likely did not take into account the supply chain, consumers, activists groups and NGOs, and certainly he would not have issued CSR reports in order to attract socially responsible investors.

This increase in stakeholder engagement is exactly what managers face today. It is simply not good enough to engage in CSR on an issue specific basis with one stakeholder, since the actions of the firm are now monitored and scrutinized by a host of internal and external stakeholders. However, the majority of CSR research involves single stakeholders, examined one at a time in isolation of others (Ferrell, 2004), and Knox and colleagues (2005) found that stakeholders other than the customer are not a priority for most firms. Indeed, many studies include experiments with consumers to determine purchase intentions while specifically ignoring the effects of CSR on other stakeholder groups. One notable exception is a recent study by Sen and colleagues (2006) which investigated the effects of CSR recognizing that individuals act as consumers, potential employees, and investors all at the same time.

In addressing this gap, Maignan and colleagues (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004; Maignan, Ferrell, and Ferrell, 2005) have proposed frameworks for developing a multiple stakeholder orientation in CSR in marketing. In particular, they propose a series of steps to guide managers who wish to implement CSR (Maignan et al., 2005). One of the most critical steps in their implementation for the current paper is one that is designed to assist managers in “understanding