CSR, Corporate Heritage Identity and Social Learning

Abstract

Prevailing approaches to the structural challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tend to be monolithic and skewed towards CSR at the organisational level. Albeit, mirroring CSR at the organisational level with activities of practitioners at the social level can offer new reflexive approaches for identifying capabilities for and understanding thresholds of social learning. This chapter maps out how identity perspectives to CSR can offer new approaches for surfacing emergent properties inherent in the uptake of CSR institutionally and in practice. The chapter also presents an overview of the interplay between structure and agency (prescribed and actual CSR practices) and its underlying instrumental role for illuminating systemic factors which perpetuate such capabilities and thresholds. Using a morphogenetic theory of change, the chapter offers a framework for approaching CSR-based corporate identity. Empirical evidence from the applied framework is thereafter presented, in the context of the agro-processing industry based on a content analysis of annual reports, in-depth-interview data generated from four sustainability managers and corporate communication officers and the practices of extension and Local Economic Development (LED) officers. The framework demonstrates that companies with a disintegrated CSR identity inherently have more capacity to be change agents. Similarly, a strong corporate heritage identity is not indicative of a reciprocal link between espoused values and activity. Conversely, an enduring corporate heritage identity may not necessarily be improvisatory for social learning. In conclusion, the chapter gives an overview of a taxonomy of agential capabilities and associated cognitive resources inherent in the interaction between structural-cultural and personal emergent properties, which can initiate the positioning of social learning at the forefront of organisational deliberations.