The implications of corporate social responsibility on defensive and proactive corporate human rights approaches : a theoretical and empirical contribution
Human rights (HRs) are increasingly perceived as a responsibility of business. However, if corporations want to address the full range of HRs demands of society—that is, if they are to respect, protect and promote HRs—they need to go beyond a defensive or negative approach focused on simply respecting HRs. They also need to respond with proactive or positive initiatives to protect and promote their stakeholders’ HRs. Hence, a critical question is whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives commonly adopted by listed corporations allow them to address this range of HRs demands of society. The primary aim of this thesis is to answer this question using Carroll’s (1979) CSR framework. I first conceptualise negative and positive HRs obligations as defensive and proactive corporate social responsiveness strategies (the second dimension of Carroll’s framework). This translates HRs obligations into business strategies for corporations. I then hypothesise and empirically test the relationships between CSR categories and defensive and proactive corporate approaches to HRs. The CSR categories used in the thesis mostly follow Carroll’s (1979) framework (discretionary, ethical and legal CSR). However, in place of Carroll’s economic CSR, I adopt instrumental CSR to include stakeholders’ values alongside shareholders’ economic interests. Political CSR is also added for an analysis of the political power of corporations. The proposed hypotheses are empirically tested using secondary longitudinal data from the Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini (KLD) and Compustat databases. The working sample includes 400 corporations during the period 1991–2015. The results show that while ethical and legal CSR may guide corporations to undertake defensive HRs approaches to respect HRs, instrumental and political CSR may allow corporations to adopt proactive HRs approaches that involve protecting and promoting HRs. The CSR categories of Carroll’s framework help to explain why corporations undertake defensive and proactive approaches to HRs and address the full range of HRs demands of society. This research contributes to both theory and practice by hypothesising and empirically testing the relationships between CSR categories and corporate HRs approaches using secondary data. A significant contribution of this thesis is to conceptualise HRs obligations as legitimate business strategies.
Procactive approaches, Corporate social responsibility, Defensive approaches, Corporate human rights
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