Corporate social responsibility as management idea: Between universal applicability and context dependency

Abstract

The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question, I propose to treat CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which contain concrete ‘management techniques’. I then analyse the global diffusion of one CSR management technique, a CSR guidance document by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC), which suggests that companies could address CSR as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Following its life-cycle through the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth stages allows me to identify forms of horizontal diffusion, that is, diffusion among peers within a particular sector or country, and vertical diffusion, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other. At each stage of the life-cycle, the success of the management technique seems to be aided by factors that treat the management technique as universally applicable. In themselves, all of these claims to universal applicability are easily countered by a more critical reading of the argumentation; yet, it is the way in which the nested levels influence each other, that is, the management technique feeding into management models and management rhetorics, that tends to give the notion of universal applicability of CSR its persuasiveness.

Keywords

Business in the Community (BITC)corporate social responsibility (CSR)diffusion of management ideas life-cycle of management ideas management ideas and management techniques

Introduction

We live in an ‘age of responsibility’ (Visser, 2011). For companies from all over the world, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential part of corporate strategy and operations (Carroll, 2021). The global diffusion of the concept has led to a growing stream of research into the impact of CSR on various aspects of corporate success, whether on financial performance (Barnett, 2019), reputation (Aguilera et al., 2007) or employee satisfaction (Wisse et al., 2018). CSR is often prescribed, for example, by consultants, and adopted by companies as a ‘cure-all’ panacea (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007). Thus, CSR seems to share the feature of management ideas more generally that ideas that have proven to be popular often get presented as if they were universally applicable. Other management ideas, like business process reengineering (BPR) or total quality management (TQM), have also been frequently presented as quick-fix solutions that bring all kinds of advantages to adopting organizations, such as greater profitability, enhanced competitiveness and better chances of survival (see e.g. Huczynski, 1993).

This constellation raises the question whether all organizations around the world, regardless of industry, size, national culture, etc. should be recommended to adopt the same version of CSR or whether CSR is better treated as having a contextually embedded nature (Örtenblad, 2016; Gjølberg, 2009). In the wider management and organization studies literature, the importance of context has increasingly attracted attention (see e.g. Wright et al., 2005; Johns, 2001). Likewise, CSR literature has acknowledged the importance of industry context (Sweeney and Coughlan, 2008) as well as national context (Matten and Moon, 2008), not least differences in approaches to CSR between developed countries and emerging economies (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007). Proponents of context dependency argue that, if context is not addressed, then organizations risk adopting solutions that could be devastating or rejecting solutions that might be beneficial (Örtenblad, 2016). Yet, the allure of the universal approach to CSR has remained strong, whether it is seen as appropriate strategy in an increasingly global market place (Cruz and Boehe, 2008) or as driven by an emerging global CSR infrastructure as exemplified by the UN Global Compact (Voegtlin and Pless, 2014).

To shed new light on the debate between universal validity and context dependency of CSR, I first propose to perceive CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which in turn contain concrete ‘management techniques’ (Abrahamson and Piazza, 2019). On that basis, I then trace the diffusion of one particular management technique, a CSR guidance document authored by Business in the Community (BITC), a leading business association in the United Kingdom, which suggests that companies can operationalize their CSR engagement as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Tracing its life-cycle through the five stages of innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth (Abrahamson and Piazza, 2019), lets me hone in on the interaction between the nested levels of abstraction. For example, I advance how aspects of the successful diffusion of the management technique shape the more abstract levels of management models and management rhetorics. As a caveat, I need to stress that this paper analyses the public discourses by a range of companies and other organizations; such an analysis cannot tell us whether the adoption of the BITC CSR document has led to any change in the organizations’ behaviours and practices.

Nonetheless, the paper extends existing literature in several directions. With regard to CSR literature, I trace the various ways in which this management technique has travelled horizontally, that is, between peer organizations, and vertically, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical order to each other (cf. Geels, 2002; Wejnert, 2002). I found horizontal diffusion within particular niches, such as within a particular sector or country, to co-exist with inter-niche diffusion, like diffusing from the private to the public and NGO sectors. In terms of vertical diffusion, the diffusion proceeded from the level a specific organization through the level of intergovernmental organizations to the level of a social landscape. As the perhaps most interesting contribution, tracing the diffusion of the BITC document allows for new insights into the debate between universal applicability and context dependency of CSR. Viewed in terms of ‘nested levels of abstraction’ (Abrahamson and Piazza, 2019), the universal nature of the CSR management technique I traced results not so much from the management technique itself being presented as universal – here, a critical reading can easily draw out limitations to such arguments for all stages of its life-cycle – but from the effect it has on the more abstract levels of management models and management rhetorics. As I will show, aspects of the management technique’s successful diffusion, such as re-packaging sector-specific knowledge into standardized solutions, feed, at the more abstract levels, into a discourse that social responsibility has become a general organizing principle for organizations from any sector. In other words, universal applicability of CSR is not so much fostered by corresponding claims at the level of the management technique; rather, its relative persuasiveness is a result of the way in which the management technique feeds into management models and management rhetorics.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews relevant literature on management ideas and corporate social responsibility; it also introduces the focal CSR management technique I intend to trace in this paper. Then, the research methods section explains my data collection and analysis processes. Thereafter, I present the findings of my study, first in terms of the diffusion of the BITC text, then with regard to factors that seem to have aided its diffusion at the various stages of its life-cycle. Before concluding, the discussion section develops key contributions of this study and comments on its limitations and avenues for future research.

Literature review

Management ideas: Nested levels of abstraction and life-cycles

Management ideas have received growing attention in recent years (see the recent handbook by Sturdy et al., 2019). They are often presented as quick-fix solutions that bring considerable advantages to the organizations that adopt them; but occasionally, they get severely criticized (Driver, 2002). Critics point to vagueness and ambiguity that often surround management ideas; admitting more than one course of action, vagueness and ambiguity may result in different versions of a particular management idea being presented to or by different actors (Giroux, 2006). Given differing interpretations, organizations may end up adopting management ideas because their peers have done so – the famous ‘bandwagon’ effect, which has generated a whole range of sub-images, like ‘steering’, ‘riding alongside’, ‘steering clear of’ or ‘falling off’ the bandwagon (Whittle, 2008). In terms of organizational performance, management ideas may appear attractive but can turn out to be superficial and ineffective, in particular where change is introduced for the sake of change (Sorge and Van Witteloostuijn, 2004). There is even a danger that, under the guise of a management idea, practices or tools are adopted that could be disastrous for the organization (Örtenblad, 2015). Last but not least, critics uncovered hegemonic tendencies and implicit control mechanisms that may arise from a management idea, where an organization’s allegedly shared vision can turn into self-disciplined censorship (Rifkin and Fulop, 1997). As Örtenblad (2015) points out, both the supportive and the critical discourses tend to be myopic: the supportive discourse rarely takes up any downsides that a management idea might have, and the sceptical discourse rarely mentions any gains that might be derived from its application. Instead, he proposes a ‘critical-pragmatic approach’ that neither takes for granted that management ideas are problem-free nor seeks to outrightly dismiss them.

To shed light on the debate between universal applicability and context dependency of CSR, I build on two contributions to literature on management ideas. A first concept that I borrow is the distinction between abstract management ideas and their instantiations in specific techniques. Here, Abrahamson and Piazza (2019) identify several nested levels of abstraction in a management idea. At the most abstract level, a ‘management rhetoric’ is ‘a discourse that promulgates, however unwittingly, a set of assumptions about the nature of the objects with which it deals’ (Barley and Kunda, 1992: 363). Rhetorics, then, give birth to ‘management models’, to ‘distinct bodies of ideas that offer organizational managers precepts [or prescriptions] for how best to fulfil their technical and social tasks’ (Bodrožić and Adler, 2018: 86). In turn, a management model becomes instantiated in a concrete ‘management […] technique that is new to the state of the art’ of an organization (Birkinshaw et al., 2008: 825).

The second concept I borrow from recent literature concerns the life-cycle of management ideas. Abrahamson and Piazza (2019) distinguish between five stages in the life-cycle of a management idea, namely innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth (see also Piazza and Abrahamson, 2020). The innovation stage is concerned with the question how management ideas get developed. Cohen et al. (1972) suggest three necessary, though not sufficient conditions: problems, solutions and participants. To start with, there has to be a (perceived) management problem – a gap between expectations of organizations and organizational outcomes – that requires a solution (Lawrence et al., 2002). Any such solution however, does not come about out of the blue (Bodrožić and Adler, 2018); rather, there is a supply side to be considered here, often played by consulting firms (Videla, 2005), business media (Ahonen, 2009) or corporate leaders (Freye, 2015), who can persuade (other) managers to apply their preferred solution.

The diffusion stage of a management idea is concerned with the question why some management ideas diffuse widely and many others only a little. Prior literature here distinguishes between ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ diffusions of management ideas (Czarniawska and Sévon, 2005; Mol and Birkinshaw, 2009). Reactive models of diffusion place their main emphasis on objective criteria with which the success of the adoption of a management idea can be judged; the ideas themselves are usually adopted without necessarily modifying them (Nelson et al., 2004). Proactive models of diffusion admit more room for social construction in the diffusion process and examine how management ideas become ‘translated’ or ‘reinvented’ during the diffusion process (Czarniawska and Sévon, 2005). A key ingredient here is what Benders and Van Veen (2001) term high ‘interpretive viability’: as management ideas usually do not offer clear-cut solutions, they allow for multiple interpretations, thus increasing the chance that a potential adopter recognizes its particular situation in the description of the problem and the solution.

A key question at the institutionalization stage of a management idea is, while many ideas have relatively transitory life-cycles, why do some receive such a degree of permanence ‘so that for things to be otherwise is literally unthinkable’ (Zucker, 1983: 25). As Barley and Tolbert (1997) explain, the steady diffusion of a management idea and the resulting ongoing interaction between societal actors lead to generalized expectations, which eventually become blue-prints for action. From this perspective, the adoption of a management idea is not so much caused by socio-technical requirements, but by a need to conform to societal expectations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Once a management idea ‘achieves a dominant position, it […] shapes subsequent action by creating a taken-for-granted frame of reference, associated routines and artifacts, and new interests vested in the new status quo’ (Bodrožić and Adler, 2018: 111).

After they faded away, management ideas may enter a rebirth stage, inviting the question why some management ideas get reborn and others not (Heusinkveld et al., 2013). Prior literature uncovered two main explanations as to how rebirth might proceed. One suggests that management ideas may remain imprinted in organizations or sectors, ready to be re-applied (Piazza and Abrahamson, 2020). As organizations encounter more or less recurring problems, such as improving productivity or maintaining quality, ‘it may be rational to possess a broad repertoire of management concepts-a tool-kit for various problems that come and go’ (Røvik, 2011: 645). Another explanation focusses on the role of supply side actors, like consultants, business media and business schools. What they present as ‘new’ may actually be reiterations of existing ideas, the proverbial ‘old wine in new bottles’ (Spell, 2001). Investigating what strategies management consultants adopt when an initially popular concept goes out of vogue, Heusinkveld et al. (2013) draw attention to, amongst others, a repositioning strategy, which involves offering the same concept to a new audience.

One key upshot of my attempt to bring together, on the one hand, the idea of levels of abstraction in a management idea and, on the other, the concept of a life-cycle is that often the life-cycle of a specific management technique is difficult to examine without considering underlying abstract ideas, as embodied in management models and management rhetorics. For example, it is difficult to study the life-cycle of a management technique, like the ‘time and motion study’ without paying attention to the more abstract ideas of ‘scientific management’ (see e.g. D’Adderio et al., 2019).

Corporate social responsibility: Nested levels of abstraction

The growing interest in CSR has been driven by a realization that companies face increasingly complex interactions of economic, environmental and social issues that often take on the scale of a ‘grand challenge’ (George et al., 2016). While the concept of CSR is widely referred to in management theory and practice, a generally accepted definition remains elusive (Mitnick et al., 2021). At the same time, CSR seems to be subject to the same polarization as was observed for management ideas generally. Often, CSR is offered as ‘cure-all’ solution. For example, in its ‘Renewed EU Strategy 2011-14 for Corporate Social Responsibility’, the European Commission (2011: 3) offers the following reasons why companies should engage in CSR: it ‘can bring benefits in terms of risk management, cost savings, access to capital, customer relationships, human resource management, and innovation capacity. […] it enables enterprises to better anticipate and take advantage of fast changing societal expectations and operating conditions’. Which company would not want to reap these benefits? However, other voices are far more critical. As CSR bestows de facto political authority on companies without demanding corresponding accountability, Rhodes and Fleming (2020: 945) warn that CSR may ‘represent a predatory corporate project, where the crisis of democracy and intensifying social problems are viewed as a unique commercial opportunity’.

Adopting Örtenblad’s (2015) ‘critical-pragmatic approach’ that avoids the myopic ‘either/or’ treatment of a management idea, I treat CSR as being shaped by isomorphic pressure from state regulation, collective self-regulation and NGO pressure, to result in generally accepted norms regarding appropriate corporate behaviour (Campbell, 2007; Aguilera et al., 2007). Such isomorphic pressure does not automatically lead to proactive engagement with CSR (Abreu et al., 2022). Rather, depending on (their interpretation of) the strength of the isomorphic pressure, firms may decide to buffer against it instead of engaging with demands for more responsible behaviour (van Den Bosch and Van Riel, 1998). Furthermore, there is often an international dimension to isomorphic pressure, where stakeholders who operate in the country of an MNE’s HQ may be more powerful than local stakeholders in countries of its subsidiaries (Roy and Quazi, 2022).

Building on literature on the diffusion of management ideas, I suggest that CSR can be conceived of in terms of nested levels of abstraction of ‘management rhetorics’, ‘management models’ and ‘management techniques’ (Abrahamson and Piazza, 2019). As a management rhetoric, CSR is concerned with abstract ideas about the place of business in the wider economic and social system. At this level, CSR could take its starting point in the embeddedness of business in society and nature. For example, Montabon et al. (2016) offer an ‘ecologically dominant logic’ for business: as a functioning ecosystem is fundamental to human survival, the social system should be seen as being subservient to the environmental system; an economic system can be said to function well when it contributes to a higher quality of life for humans; hence, the economic system is, in turn, subservient to the social system (see also the critique in Preuss and Fearne, 2022). Such rhetorics then become translated into management models, more concrete prescriptions that aid managers to implement CSR as both technical and social task (Bodrožić and Adler, 2018). A well-known example at this level is the business case for CSR (Carroll and Shabana, 2010), according to which companies derive financial and other benefits from engaging in CSR (see also Hahn et al., 2015). In turn, management models give birth to management techniques, to concrete management processes, structures and tools. Examples of conceptualizations of CSR at this level are the multitude of CSR policy documents that range from the supranational level, for example, the UN Global Compact, to the organizational level, for example, a company’s Code of Conduct, and the level of individual company functions, for example, an ethical procurement policy (Preuss, 2010).

The focal CSR management technique of this paper

This paper examines the life-cycle of one management technique, a CSR guidance document developed by Business in the Community (BITC), a leading CSR business association in the United Kingdom (Grayson, 2007). BITC was founded in 1982 with a mission to encourage the regeneration of inner-city areas through entrepreneurship. By the end of the 1980s, more than 400 corporations had joined; at the time of writing, this figure had increased to over 600 members. BITC is thus ‘one of the world’s leading business-led CSR coalitions’ (Kinderman, 2012: 29). Its membership largely consists of large private sector organizations but includes also public sector and voluntary organizations.

The engagement of business associations in CSR has been accompanied by a debate whether they merely lobby for their members’ own benefits or whether they can be viable self-regulatory institutions that are capable of addressing contemporary sustainability issues (Marques, 2017). For the case of BITC, (Kinderman (2012): 39) documented how leading figures in the early phases of BITC were outspoken supporters of the policies of Margaret Thatcher; yet ‘they were motivated by humanitarian and religious ideals and an expansive conception of their self-interest’. Rather than providing a fig-leaf for market liberalization, he suggests that the activities by BITC have complemented liberalization by providing compensation for some of the social dislocations that resulted from the rampant liberalization of markets at that time.

In 2000, BITC brought together a team of business, civil society and government leaders to write its guide Winning with Integrity-A Guide to Social Responsibility. The guide suggested five material areas for CSR: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace, Community and Human Rights, which are to be supported by Purpose and Values and Guiding Principles (BITC, 2000). These areas became BITC’s definition of the scope of CSR for almost two decades. In summer 2018, the document was replaced with a more up-to-date one, BITC’s Responsible Business Map, which seeks to capture a company’s responsible business strategy through a larger set of topics. What makes the BITC text interesting for analysis is the fact – as the guidance document was published in 2000 and replaced by a new one in 2018 – that I am able to study its entire life-cycle. In many other cases, the exact starting and end points of the use of a management technique are more difficult, if not impossible to determine. Furthermore, I am able to study not only the expansion but also the contraction and rebirth phases of its life-cycle, whereas many diffusion studies tend to focus on the first phase only.

Research methods

Research design

As the life-cycle of the management idea of CSR has received scant prior attention, I opted for an exploratory methodological stance (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). Furthermore, I followed the approach by Furusten (1999) in his study of the diffusion of popular management books to apply a combination of two methods, one to study the text and one to study the context in which a text diffuses. Extended to my topic, I first captured the extent to which the BITC guidance document diffused around the globe and, secondly, the factors that can explain its success at the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization and rebirth stages, including implications for universal applicability and context dependency. To this end, I applied two distinct research methods, first the trace measure method and then document content analysis.

The trace measure method is based on the premise that human behaviour can be studied through the physical traces it leaves behind (Rathje, 1979; Webb et al., 1966). A trace can be defined as ‘an alteration in the physical properties of an object or the relations between objects’ (Sullivan, 1978: 194). Rathje (1979) suggests that an examination of traces needs to account for four dimensions: (1) a formal dimension, which captures the physical properties of material, size, weight, etc.; (2) a frequency dimension, which counts occurrences of a particular trace; (3) a spatial dimension, which establishes the physical locations of the trace and (4) a relational dimension, which connect the various locations. The trace measure method has its origins in the social sciences, particularly in archaeology (e.g. Sullivan, 1978). However, there have been applications in management and organization studies too. For example, Tani and Rathje (1995) were interested in the extent to which different groups of consumers discard or recycle various forms of waste. As their empirical data, they systematically sifted the refuse discarded by several thousand households in different communities from across the US. The researchers then obtained socio-economic data for each location. Bringing together refuse data and demographic data allowed them to generate conclusions regarding consumer behaviour.

In a second stage, I analysed the content of all the documents I had found in the first stage. Content analysis is defined as a systematic and objective analysis of the characteristics of a text (Neuendorf, 2017). Content analysis has been used in management studies (see e.g. Welch et al., 2011) and CSR research (Windscheid et al., 2018); it hence seems to be a suitable research method for my purposes too. In particular, I performed a qualitative content analysis, where the aim is not so much to enumerate certain categories but to generate a better understanding of focal phenomena (Welch et al., 2011; Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). Building on the distinction by Hsieh and Shannon (2005) between exploratory, directed and summative content analysis, I applied a directed approach as the aim of this study was to conceptually extend existing theory. Prior theory can provide pointers as to which phenomena might be of interest, yet this process needs to leave space for emerging phenomena to refine and extend theory. To counter challenges to the consistency of the enquiry, a thorough documentation of the data collection and analysis processes is of utmost importance (White et al., 2012; Guba, 1981).

Data collection and analysis

Extending the application of the trace measure method from physical traces to texts, I conducted repeat searches of the internet between January 2011 and December 2020. To reduce possible bias, I used all of the most popular search engines, namely Google, Yahoo, Baidu, Bing, Yandex, Ask and AOL. Through these searches, I generated a data set of documents that describe CSR in the exact terms used by BITC, that is, ‘Workplace’, ‘Marketplace’, ‘Community’, ‘Environment’¹. ‘Workforce’ was admitted as equivalent to ‘Workplace’, since BITC itself uses both terms interchangeably. I took great care to ensure that the authors of these documents not just mentioned the BITC terms but actually applied them to their own organizations. Signs of application are the use of the very BITC terms on the contents page of a CSR report to structure the company’s reporting on CSR (e.g. document #D2, British Airways, 2009/10 Corporate Responsibility Report) or an explicit statement that the company has adopted the BITC terms for its internal use. For example, Blakemore Retail writes: ‘We break our corporate responsibility programme down into the key areas of the workplace, marketplace, community and environment’ (document #D26).

In my data collection, I made sure that the texts use exactly the same terms as BITC. Many texts used very similar terms to describe CSR commitments. For example, UK port management company Belfast Harbour uses the terms ‘Our Community’, ‘Our Planet’, ‘Our People’, ‘Our Marketplace’ in its Responsible Business Report 2016; that is, the BITC term ‘Environment’ is replaced by ‘Our Planet’ and ‘Workplace’ by ‘Our People’ (see Table 1 for additional examples). There is a high likelihood that Belfast Harbour took these four terms from BITC, after all the company is a member of BITC Northern Ireland. However, as I wanted to capture the life-cycle of the BITC guidance document, I retained for my analysis only those documents that use the exact BITC terms. The 368 organizations I identified as using the BITC text are thus only the tip of the iceberg; in all likelihood, the influence of the BITC guidance document goes way beyond these.

Table 1.

Examples of organizations using similar but not identical terms to BITC.

Company	Document	Industry	Country	Year	Terms used
Clancy Docwra	CR report 2012	Construction	UK	2012	Marketplace, People, Community, Environment
Eurovia UK	Integrated business Update 2017	Infrastructure	UK, subsidiary of Vinci, France	2018	Workplace, Market, Community, Environment
Tenaga Nasional Berhad	CSR section of company website	Electricity generation and distribution	Malaysia	2015	Empowering the community
					Setting standards in the marketplace
					Greening the nation
					Nurturing a vibrant workplace
CDF corporation	Website	Packaging company	USA	No date	Marketplace, Workplace and Community
CDF corporation	Website	Packaging company	USA	No date	[i.e. Environment is missing]
Singtel	Website	Communications group	Singapore	No date	Environment, People, Community, Marketplace

Once I had ensured that a text uses the very terminology of the BITC guidance document, I proceeded to capture the bibliographical details of the text, namely name of authoring organization, year and place of publication. It was a particular challenge to establish a year of publication for websites. Here, I turned to internet archive Wayback Machine. Wayback regularly saves internet websites to capture their content and layout. At the time of writing, it had captured about 789 billion web pages. For example, the website of the journal Competition & Change, https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/home/cch, was captured 12 times between 2 May 2019 and 31 December 2020. Furthermore, I took particular care to establish the date not of the earliest capture of a website but the earliest capture of a version that contains the exact BITC terms. For example, the CSR website of UK food company Tate & Lyle was captured first on 7 June 2010, but the four BITC terms only appeared on its website in 2012. In this case, I recorded 2012 as year of publication. Where an organization referred to the BITC guidance document repeatedly in several document only the earliest reference was noted.

In collecting data for the content analysis, I went back to the texts I had identified on the basis of the trace measure method. I examined these texts with a view to extracting statements on how the issuing organization came to adopt the BITC guidance document, what its motives were for doing so and what, in their view, made the guidance an attractive template. Building on the diffusion data in the first stage, I developed a coding framework to capture the mechanisms through which the BITC guidance document diffused and the features that made it attractive to adopters.

Findings

I first report here on findings derived through the application of the trace measure method, giving insights into the extent of the diffusion of BITC’s CSR guidance document, and thereafter on those from the content analysis of the collected texts, which allowed me to generate insights into its life-cycle, including implications for the debate between universal applicability and context dependency of CSR.

Trace measure method: Extent of diffusion of the CSR guidance document

BITC had published its CSR guidance document in 2000. 10 years later, by December 2020, it had been adopted by a total of 368 different organizations worldwide (see Table 2). The diffusion had a slow start, as first adoptions could only be recorded for the year 2003. From 2007, the diffusion accelerated sharply for every year, except for 2011. After 2013, there was a sharp drop in the rate of new adopters. 2016 brought a slight recovery, but thereafter the adoption rate hovered at the levels of the period 2003–2007 until the end of the study period in 2020 (see Figure 1).

Table 2.

Adoption of the BITC guidance document by organization type.

Organization type	Number of organizations (n = 368)	Earliest reference	Relationship with BITC
Organization type	Number of organizations (n = 368)	Earliest reference	Direct (in %)	Indirect (in %)	None (in %)
Private sector	311	2003	27,0	3,25	69,8
Civil society	27	2005	48,2	14,8	37,0
Public sector	21	2005	38,1	9,5	52,4
Intergovernmental organization	9	2005	22,2	0	77,8

Figure 1.

Adoption of the BITC guidance document over time: New adopters per year.

Analysing diffusion in sectoral terms, the greatest uptake of the CSR guidance document occurred in the private sector (84% or 311 organizations). These companies range from well-known brands, like Marks & Spencer or Thomson Reuters to small local firms. Beyond the private sector, the guidance document has also been adopted by civil society organizations (7% or 27 organizations). They include the Law Society in the UK, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and CSR organization Community Business in Hong Kong. The guidance document furthermore diffused to the public sector (6% or 21 organizations), for example to the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency, the Irish Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation or the New York Power Authority, as well a number of universities in the UK. Finally, the guidance document has been taken up by nine intergovernmental organizations (2% of all organizations), including the European Commission, the UN Global Compact office and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Analysing diffusion in geographical terms (see Table 3), it was first and foremost the UK itself (50% of 186 organizations) where the BITC guidance document has been taken up. Beyond the UK, it diffused to another 39 countries on all five continents, with clusters of its adoption occurring in Malaysia, Ireland, the USA and Australia.

Table 3.

Adoption of the BITC guidance document by country.

Country	No of organizations (n = 368)	Earliest reference	Relationship with BITC
Country	No of organizations (n = 368)	Earliest reference	Direct (in %)	Indirect (in %)	None (in %)
UK	186	2003	49,5	1,6	48,9
Malaysia	53	2006	0,0	0,0	100,0
Ireland	24	2004	25,0	20,8	54,2
USA	21	2008	0,0	9,5	90,5
Australia	15	2007	6,7	13,3	80,0
UEA	8	2008	12,5	12,5	75,0
Hong Kong	5	2005	20,0	20,0	60,0
Canada	5	2012	0,0	0,0	100,0
Sweden	3	2006	0,0	0,0	100,0
India	3	2008	0,0	0,0	100,0
Greece	3	2009	33,3	0,0	66,7
Switzerland	3	2012	0,0	0,0	100,0
Germany	2	2007	0,0	0,0	100,0
New Zealand	2	2008	50,0	0,0	50,0
Bermuda	2	2010	0,0	50,0	50,0
Saudi Arabia	2	2012	0,0	0,0	100,0
Nigeria	2	2013	0,0	0,0	100,0
Croatia	1	2005	100,0	0,0	0,0
Denmark	1	2005	0,0	100,0	0,0
South Africa	1	2008	0,0	0,0	100,0
Turkey	1	2008	0,0	0,0	100,0
Uganda	1	2008	0,0	0,0	100,0
Israel	1	2009	100,0	0,0	0,0
France	1	2010	0,0	0,0	100,0
Georgia	1	2010	100,0	0,0	0,0
Czech Republic	1	2010	0,0	0,0	100,0
Cayman Islands	1	2011	0,0	0,0	100,0
Romania	1	2011	0,0	0,0	100,0
Hungary	1	2012	0,0	0,0	100,0
Cyprus	1	2013	0,0	0,0	100,0
Korea	1	2013	0,0	0,0	100,0
Palestine	1	2013	0,0	0,0	100,0
Estonia	1	2014	0,0	0,0	100,0
Lebanon	1	2014	0,0	0,0	100,0
Thailand	1	2015	0,0	0,0	100,0
Singapore	1	2016	0,0	0,0	100,0
China	1	2017	0,0	0,0	100,0
Belgium	1	2018	0,0	0,0	100,0
Italy	1	2019	0,0	0,0	100,0
Egypt	1	No date	0,0	0,0	100,0
International organization	6	2005	16,7	0,0	83,3

Thus, the BITC guidance document enjoyed considerable success in its diffusion across the globe (see also Preuss, 2020). Its diffusion took off slowly until 2007, then sharply increased between 2007 and 2013, and then fell sharply again. Overall, its diffusion pattern is similar to Rogers’ (2003) bell-shaped curve. In terms of organizational sector, the biggest uptake was among private sector organizations, but public sector, non-profit as well as intergovernmental organizations found it useful too. The guidance document’s diffusion thus echoes prior studies into how a management idea can travel from one sector to another when its importers stress its suitability as general template (Kirkpatrick et al., 2013). With regard to diffusion geography, the BITC guidance document travelled first and foremost to English-speaking countries, while uptake in continental Europe as well as in developing countries has been more recent. This result again mirrors findings in prior literature that management ideas diffuse easiest to countries that are similar to each other in economic, political and cultural terms (Kaplan and Kinderman, 2020).

The data also show how a CSR management technique can travel horizontally and vertically (Wejnert, 2002). Horizontal diffusion takes place between peers (Leonard-Barton and Rogers, 1981) or organizations of comparable standing, whereas vertical diffusion happens where organizations stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other, such as regional or local government to national government (Boushey, 2012). The BITC document has spread horizontally within peer groups, whether these are understood to operate at sectoral or country levels. The extensive uptake among UK-based private sector companies is an example of this process. In addition, diffusion can also take place between different peer groups, but still between organizations of comparable standing, like the attempt by BITC to export its guidance from the private sector to higher education. In addition, the management technique has extensively travelled in vertical directions. In a small number of cases, the CSR guidance document passed between firms of one group. For example, it appears in the Coca Cola Group in 2008, in its Turkish and South African subsidiaries also in 2008, its Greek one in 2009 and its Australian and Indian ones in 2011. Moreover, the diffusion also proceeded from a micro-level of an individual organization to a meso-level of major intergovernmental organizations to a macro-level of a social landscape (Geels, 2002).

Document content analysis: Life-cycle of the CSR guidance document

The BITC guidance document underwent a clear life-cycle (see Figure 1) with an identifiable innovation phase (2000–2003), a diffusion phase marked by a sharp increase in adoption (2007–2013) and a decline phase (from 2013). As I will show now, there are also signs of an institutionalization of the BITC text. Furthermore, I uncovered evidence for its rebirth, which becomes visible when comparing diffusion in the two most numerous countries, the UK and Malaysia (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Adoption of the BITC guidance document by country: UK versus Malaysia.

With regard to the innovation stage, the literature review had drawn out three necessary – though not sufficient – conditions that enable the successful innovation of a management idea, namely addressing a salient management problem through offering an actionable solution in close collaboration with participants (Cohen et al., 1972). In its guidance document, BITC itself made clear that it sees CSR as a salient management problem (BITC, 2000: 4): ‘Companies can’t afford to ignore these questions. They are central to success. Socially responsible businesses have additional tools at their disposal which help them score more highly on all these fronts’. In terms of solution, BITC (2000: 2) stressed its aim to present a document that speaks the language of business: ‘Throughout this report we have done our utmost to use consistent, understandable language […] This material aims to provide practical, business like advice’. Furthermore, the team that wrote the document involved leaders from major UK companies, government departments, like the Department of Trade and Industry (renamed since), as well as industry associations, such as the Confederation of British Industry and the European Foundation for Quality Management.

At the diffusion stage, a number of ways became noticeable in which BITC actively sought to stimulate the uptake of its guidance document. One other, very visible activity of BITC at the time was the Corporate Responsibility Index, an annual evaluation of CSR practices in UK companies that was published in the Financial Times. Developed in 2002, the index was used by several hundred companies. Notably, the CR Index measured responsible business practices across the four management areas of Community, Environment, Marketplace and Workplace. A number of company documents (e.g. energy company SSE, document #D90) illustrate how the structuring of the CR Index shaped a company’s general approach to CSR. BITC also took proactive steps to itself aid the diffusion of the CSR guidance document. A key example here is its attempt to export its guidance document to the public sector in the form of an Environmental and Social Responsibility (ESR) Index for higher education institutions (BITC, 2007). One of the participants in the index, the University of Warwick, described its own social and environmental impact in terms of ‘the areas of community, workplace, environment and marketplace (covering students and suppliers)’ [document #E1]. Here too the underlying reporting requirements – which were structured in terms of the four areas – seem to have formed the basis for internal engagement with the organization’s social responsibilities.

At the institutionalization stage, a management idea begins to displays a relatively persistent reproduction and becomes taken for granted over time (Zucker, 1983). Indeed, I found a number of mechanisms through which the BITC guidance document spread without any direct effort by BITC. A number of organizations borrowed the guidance document, acknowledging BITC’s authorship. For example, UNDP Georgia authored a guide Winning with Integrity: Corporate Social Responsibility Handbook in 2010. This publication not only uses the same title as BITC; it also acknowledges that ‘The CSR handbook drafted by the British organization Business in the Community (BITC) […] was utilized as the starting point’ [document #B1]. A similar CSR handbook by UNDP Croatia is also explicitly based on BITC material [document #B5]. As the clearest sign of institutionalization, 66% (245 of 368 organizations) – by far the largest group of organizations – applied the BITC terminology without referring to BITC at all. For example, UNICEF advocated its Children’s Rights and Business Principles and writes that these principles ‘call on business everywhere to respect and support children’s rights throughout their activities and business relationships, including in the workplace, the marketplace, the community and the environment’ [document #B4]. However, neither for UNICEF nor for any other organization in this group of adopters could any reference to BITC be found.

In terms of the rebirth stage, there is evidence of what Heusinkveld et al. (2013) termed a repositioning strategy, where authors of a management idea aim to offer it to a novel market, often retaining content and label. A particularly interesting case in this context is Malaysia. In 2006, the CEO of Bursa Malaysia, the Malaysian stock exchange, presented Bursa Malaysia’s CSR Framework for Malaysian PLCs, which promotes ‘CSR Focal Areas Environment, Workplace, Community, Marketplace’ [document #D35]. The framework was designed to support an initiative by the Prime Minister of Malaysia to encourage the adoption of CSR among Malaysian companies. To that purpose, Bursa Malaysia commissioned Hong Kong-based consultancy CSR Asia to undertake a survey of the state of CSR in the country (CSR Asia, 2007). The BITC terms are thus likely to have entered Malaysia via Hong Kong; yet where Malaysian companies ascribe the document to a source at all, they refer to Bursa Malaysia rather than BITC or CSR Asia. For example, CSR consulting firm Helikonia writes: ‘As a company based in Malaysia, we use the Bursa Malaysia CSR framework of Marketplace, Workplace, Community and Environment to manage and monitor our practices’ [document #D184]. The organizational field in Malaysia is hence completely void of any traces of the original author; moreover, these are replaced by traces of a local amplifier of the management technique.

Discussion

The starting point for this study was the debate whether CSR can be universal or should be context-specific (Örtenblad, 2016; Gjølberg, 2009). At a first glance, the successful diffusion of the BITC guidance document seems to strengthen the case for universal applicability of this management technique. The text itself seems to have benefitted from ‘interpretative viability’ (Benders and Van Veen, 2001) as it expresses a complex idea like CSR in just four words. Yet, as its diffusion progressed, the increase in the adoption rate became particularly pronounced for organizations for whom I could not find any relationship with BITC. By 2013, 75% of all organizations that use the management technique do not refer to BITC, as compared with 20% for which a direct link to BITC, such as being a member or participating in its many CSR activities, could be found (see Figure 1). Critically reflecting on these results, a growing share of organizations with no link to BITC suggests decreasing objectivity and rigour and perhaps even an increasingly unquestioned acceptance of BITC’s terms text. This pattern then raises questions regarding attention (to the details of the model) or intention (to use it because of its convenience versus because it suits an organization’s purpose) by adopters of the BITC guidance document.

Furthermore, the data allowed me to draw out key factors that seem to have supported its diffusion success at the various life-cycle stages. Analysed in terms of universal applicability versus context specificity, at each stage of the diffusion process there are key success factors that support the universal applicability side of the argument. A critical reading of these quickly arrives at limitations for each of these arguments; however, this does not seem to have diminished the overall effectiveness of the universal applicability argument. Rather, by returning to the argument that the diffusion of CSR can usefully be analysed in terms of nested levels of abstraction, I will now show that universalist arguments in the management technique, the BITC text, feed into the more abstract levels of management model and management rhetoric (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Successful diffusion of the management technique and themes supported at more abstract levels.

Stage of the diffusion process	Aspects that aided the successful diffusion of the management technique	Supported theme at the level of a management model and/or a management rhetoric	Other examples of the supported theme
Innovation stage	Language that speaks to the private sector	Business has a positive role to play in addressing sustainability	UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2021, calling upon the private sector:
Innovation stage	Inclusion of high calibre leaders from the private sector and beyond		‘We need you more than ever …’
Diffusion stage	Proactive steps by the author to export its text from the private to the public and NGO sectors	Social responsibility as general organizing principle for organizations from any sector	WWF UK document Water is Everybody’s Business: ‘By working together, businesses and communities can turn things around, safeguarding water resources for everyone’.
	Sector-specific knowledge becomes re-packed into
	standardized solutions
Institutionalization stage	Diffusion without direct efforts by its author	Involvement of private sector in sustainable development becomes taken-for-granted	Jonathan Glennie, journalist with The Guardian:
	Ascription of the guidance document to a ‘wrong’ author		‘we are getting to a point that was once unthinkable […] The private sector is now close to being considered an equal partner in development debates’.
	Identifying its author becomes seen as futile
Rebirth stage	Repositioning strategy: The management idea is offered to a novel market, while content and label remain the same	Universalization: Private sector role in sustainability applies in each and every country	UN global compact–Accenture CEO study on sustainability: ‘we assessed the performance of more than 9000 of the largest companies globally on indicators for growth, profitability and sustainability’.
Rebirth stage	Increasing detachment from its author

With regard to the innovation stage, BITC took great care to address the tripod of problem, solution and participants (Cohen et al., 1972); not only did it take steps to incorporate potential adopters into the team that designed the document, it also placed great emphasis on using language that speaks to the private sector. The deliberate inclusion of high calibre leaders from the private sector and beyond supports an understanding that texts are more likely to diffuse successfully if they are produced by social actors that are perceived to have a legitimate right to speak (Phillips et al., 2004). Thus, legitimacy in the eyes of business organizations is likely to have contributed to the uptake of the BITC-produced text in the wider CSR discourse within the business community and beyond. Observing the innovation stage from a critical vantage point, one cannot fail but notice a heavy reliance on the business case for CSR, as BITC says that ‘companies cannot afford to ignore’ CSR (emphasis added); yet, the importance of the business case is likely to vary with the sector and the size of a company inasmuch as the business case is less pronounced for B2B than for B2C firms, less clear for smaller than for large firms (Udayasankar, 2008). Either way, the data seem to suggest that the successful diffusion of the management technique has contributed to strengthening a theme at management model and/or management rhetoric level that business has a positive role to play in addressing sustainability challenges. This theme is reflected, for example, in a recent call by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he called upon the private sector: ‘We need you more than ever to help us change course, end fragility, avert climate catastrophe and build the equitable and sustainable future we want and we need’ (United Nations, 2021).

At the diffusion stage, the diffusion of the BITC guidance document largely took place within reference groups of comparator firms (Mol and Birkinshaw, 2009); learning from organizations beyond that group was aided by the proactive steps that BITC undertook to foster the export of its guidance document to sectors beyond the private one. Diffusion success seems to increase the more an idea is presented as a standardized, well-packaged variation of more sector-specific knowledge that now claims universal applicability (see also Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall, 2002; Strang and Meyer, 1993). However, a critical reading of this approach would ask whether it was directed more at a strategic selling of the product than its inherent suitability. Again, my findings seem to suggest that the successful diffusion of the management technique has contributed to strengthening a theme at management model and/or management rhetoric level that extends CSR ‘to social responsibility as general organizing principle for organizations from any sector’ (Preuss, 2020: 145). This sentiment is expressed, for example, by WWF UK (2018) in its guide Water is Everybody’s Business, where the NGO writes: “By working together, businesses and communities can turn things around, safeguarding water resources for everyone.”

At the institutionalization stage, much of the diffusion of the management technique proceeded without any direct effort by its author. There were a small number of organizations who ascribed the BITC guidance document to a ‘wrong’ author. In other words, by this stage the management technique became so taken-for-granted that no effort seemed needed to properly identify its author. The successful diffusion of the management technique thus can be said to have contributed to strengthening a theme at management model and/or management rhetoric level that alternatives to a private sector role in addressing the challenges of sustainable development become (increasingly) unthinkable. Such reasoning is expressed, for example, by Jonathan Glennie (2017) writing in The Guardian on the changed attitude by intergovernmental organizations, like the UN and the OECD, to the private sector: ‘we are getting to a point that was once unthinkable, and therefore wholly unacceptable to some. The private sector is now close to being considered an equal partner in development debates, whether large multinationals in international discussions at the UN, or small businesses at the national level’.

At the rebirth stage, a hallmark of success was a repositioning strategy where the management technique is offered to a novel market, while content and label remain the same. One key aspect here is that the management technique has become detached from the considerable legitimacy that BITC as author could have conveyed on adopters of the document. By the time it arrived in Malaysia, the management technique got diffused as Bursa Malaysia’s CSR Framework for Malaysian PLCs. A critical reading of this finding would speak here of a mechanical adoption of the management technique, which may have two foundations. More charitably, it could be an oversight by organizations that sought to reassure themselves (and others) that they are following good CSR principles; alternatively, it may be that some organizations are cynically interpreting CSR as loosely as this permits them to hide beneath the cloak of the BTIC model and pass themselves off as ‘CSR savvy’. While this question cannot be settled here, the findings seem to suggest that the successful diffusion of the management technique has strengthened a theme at management model and/or management rhetoric level regarding the universal applicability of a private sector role in sustainable development. This theme is reflected in the UN Global Compact–Accenture (2021: 56) CEO Studies on Sustainability. The 2021 study says: ‘we assessed the performance of more than 9000 of the largest companies globally on indicators for growth, profitability and sustainability/trust’. Such an exercise assumes that the business and sustainability performance from companies from vastly different sectors and geographic locations can and should be compared.

To summarize my main argument, at all the stages of the life-cycle of the management idea there have been success factors that highlighted the universal applicability of the management idea. A critical reading – as one can and should expect of an organization that considers adopting this management technique – quickly arrives at limitations for these universal applicability arguments. However, these claims to universal applicability are not necessarily effective on their own accord; they are effective because they feed into universal assumptions at higher levels of the nested levels abstraction, that is, in management models and management rhetorics.

Limitations and avenues for future research

This paper has a number of limitations. As a first limitation, I focussed on one management idea only and used – like many other scholars of the diffusion of management ideas – ‘a mono-innovation strategy’ (Strang and Soule, 1998). Following the life-cycle of a single management idea allows for detailed insights, but possibly obscures findings that might become visible in comparative studies. Secondly, while I was able to follow one management technique in detail, I was not able to measure its impacts at the more abstract levels of management model and management rhetoric with the same rigour. As a third limitation, I generated my conclusions from the study of a successful diffusion of a management idea. While I believe I have undertaken a thorough study, I have left critical questioning of the quality and efficacy of the model for further research. In this context, examining a failing management idea might have led to different, but equally valid insights. Fourthly, by focussing on the diffusion of a text I was unable to research organizational processes around the adoption of the BITC guidance document. The analysis undertaken in this paper cannot tell us whether or not the adoption of this CSR text leads to any change in organizational behaviours and practices. A final limitation concerns the dominance of English in the generation and diffusion of management knowledge. The BITC guidance document has been translated into languages other than English (e.g. Braun and Schwarz, 2006), but studying these texts goes beyond the scope of this paper.

These limitations open up fruitful opportunities for future research. Building on a growing interest in the work of key change agents inside and outside of organizations in driving management innovation (Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Freye, 2015), future research could examine whether there are particular organizational factors, such as organizational size or financial performance, that may have influenced the take-up of a management technique like the BITC guidance document. Relatedly, scholars could establish whether the organizations in my sample adopted the BITC guidance merely symbolically or whether its adoption led to substantive changes in their management practices (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008). Given that the diffusion of a management idea is often a two-way process (Czarniawska and Sévon, 2005), future studies could also examine how the diffusion process has impacted the author, whether BITC or the local amplifiers in their respective countries. In line with my argument that the diffusion of CSR should be understood as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, the greatest opportunity for future research lies in devising methods that can capture the three levels of management technique, management model and management rhetoric simultaneously.

Conclusions

The aim of this paper was to shed new light on the debate between universal validity and context dependency of CSR, using Örtenblad’s (2015) ‘critical-pragmatic approach’ that neither ignores the downsides of management ideas nor outrightly dismisses them. Building on Abrahamson and Piazza’s (2019) notion of ‘nested levels of abstraction’ in management ideas, I argued in this paper – as its first contribution to the development of literature – that CSR too could be understood in terms of such nested levels, consisting of relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, which harbour more prescriptive ‘management models’, which in turn contain concrete ‘management techniques’.

I then traced the global diffusion of one management technique, a CSR guidance document developed by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC) through its entire life-cycle, from innovation through diffusion and institutionalization to rebirth. As a second contribution, I identified various forms of horizontal and vertical diffusion, for example, horizontal diffusion within particular sectoral niches and vertical diffusion from a particular firm through the level of intergovernmental organizations to the level of a social landscape. Horizontal and vertical travel are concepts that have been applied by sociologists to study the diffusion of innovation (e.g. Geels, 2002; Wejnert; 2002); I extended the distinction to the diffusion of CSR as a management idea.

Finally, I showed how factors that seem to have contributed to the successful diffusion of the management technique tend to be undergirded by arguments for a universal applicability of the management technique at hand, and CSR more generally (on the universal applicability of CSR, see also Lim and Pope, 2022). When these universalist arguments are subjected to a critical reading, limitations quickly become apparent for all the stages of the management idea’s life-cycle. However, when viewed in terms of nested levels of abstraction, the universalist arguments at the level of the management idea nonetheless feed into the more abstract levels of management model and management rhetoric. For example, an emphasis, at the level of the management technique, on re-packaging sector-specific knowledge into standardized solutions feeds into a discourse, at the level of management rhetoric, that social responsibility is a general organizing principle for organizations from any sector. In sum, and as a third contribution, the paper showed that claims to universal applicability are not so much effective because of their own discursive qualities; rather, they are effective because they feed into matching assumptions at higher levels of the nested levels of abstraction.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author wishes to stress that he was never employed nor received any financial support from Business in the Community. The paper represents solely the views of its author. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the Academy of Management Meeting in August 2014; the Annual Conference of the Academy of International Business - UK and Ireland Chapter (AIB-UKI) in April 2019 and the Annual Conference of the International Association for Business and Society (IABS) in July 2020. I would like to thank the participants of the respective sessions for their insightful comments on the paper. My particular thanks go to Hugh Lee for his comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lutz Preuss

Note

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