Corporate social responsibility is vital to our future development as it will control many of the excesses and mistakes that might otherwise be made by businesses around the world. However, having an appropriate and active strategy in this realm can also boost a company’s competitiveness. New research published in the International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management, looks at how a business might more effectively develop such a strategy to the benefit of us all and to the benefit of its bottom line.
Sarah Margaretha Jastram and Zara Berberyan of the Hamburg School of Business Administration in Germany, point out that there are many well-documented advantages to strategic corporate social responsibility. Despite this, however, they point out that there is a dearth of coherent models to guide managements towards developing such a strategy. Moreover, there are many practices in this realm that are not strategic. As such, the team has developed – based on fifteen years of experience – what they refer to as a well-grounded framework based on specific analytical tools that can help with the effective formulation and assessment of corporate social responsibility.
Such a framework will preclude diffuse and non-targeted investments in corporate social responsibility that would otherwise not lead to the desired benefits to society and the business itself. A strategic approach can, the team suggests, guide core business choices and so substantially strengthen competitive positioning as well as reaping the wider rewards of taking a stance on corporate social responsibility.
“With this practical framework, we aim to encourage firms to formulate more competitive corporate social responsibility strategies comprising more innovative and unique approaches,” the team writes.
Jastram, S.M. and Berberyan, Z. (2021) ‘How to develop a corporate social responsibility strategy’, Int. J. Sustainable Strategic Management, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp.51–62.