Exerting Pressure or Leveraging Power? The Extended Chain of Corporate Social Responsibility Enforcement in Business-to-Business Supply Chains

In face of the increasing attention on issues of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by the general public and policy makers, companies have put growing emphasis on ensuring CSR along their supply chains. Existing research has produced evidence that companies can increase their suppliers’ CSR engagement by exerting explicit pressure on them, for example, through contractual clauses. Adding to this conventional chain of CSR enforcement, this article conceptualizes and empirically validates a yet-undescribed extended chain of CSR enforcement that also leads to higher levels of CSR engagement by a supplier firm, irrespective and even in absence of explicit pressure by the customer firm. In particular, a customer firm's CSR orientation in interaction with a powerful position in the supply chain leads suppliers to perceive pressure to engage in CSR regardless of factually exerted pressure. As a result, suppliers are likely to increase their CSR engagement in order to be customer oriented or in preemptive obedience. These results entail substantial implications for policy makers as well as marketing academics and managers.