Publication date: Available online 16 January 2016
Source:Organizational Dynamics

Author(s): Xiaowen Tian, John W. Slocum

Publication date: Available online 18 January 2016
Source:Long Range Planning

Author(s): Juelin Yin, Dima Jamali

With the advent of globalization, the track record of multinational companies (MNCs) has been vague in relation to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the emerging host markets. What seems lacking is a better understanding of what exactly is required of today's MNCs to simultaneously generate profits for shareholders, while satisfying the legitimate demands from multiple stakeholders in the countries where they operate. This paper explores whether and how MNC subsidiaries practice strategic CSR in the emerging market of China. Drawing on various streams of CSR literature, we develop a conceptual framework and then apply it to analyze the CSR strategies of eleven MNCs known to be active in relation to their CSR involvement in China. Our multiple case studies, involving interviews with MNC managers and archival research, reveal distinctive features of CSR orientation and the strategies of MNCs that rely on developing relationships with non-traditional stakeholders, co-inventing social solutions, and building local capacity and infrastructure in emerging markets, being sensitized to a mixture of motivations and reconciling social and economic value creation. The findings are analyzed and implications are drawn regarding how MNC subsidiaries position themselves in the context of CSR in emerging markets.

Publication date: Available online 18 January 2016
Source:European Management Journal

Author(s): Graeme Martin, Elaine Farndale, Jaap Paauwe, Philip G. Stiles

In this paper we develop a new typology connecting strategic human resource management (SHRM) to different models of firm-level corporate governance. By asking questions concerning ownership and control issues in the corporate governance literature and drawing on institutional logics, we build a typological framework that identifies four firm-level archetypes of corporate governance systems. Two archetypes represent dominant logic types (shareholder value, communitarian stakeholder), while the other two represent hybrid organizations (enlightened shareholder value, employee-ownership). Using these archetypes, we theorize the implications of different governance structures for SHRM and the challenges they pose. We conclude by discussing a novel solution to many of these challenges based on the corporate sustainability literature, and, in so doing, provide new directions for SHRM research to tackle key challenges facing organizations and the management of people.

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational-level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation-related antecedents and consequences, using component-based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation-related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations.