Är Corporate Social Responsibility ett renhårigt koncept? En studie om CSR, HR och organisatorisk rättvisa

Abstract

Purpose: This thesis first intention is to understand the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from an organizational justice perspective, understanding how companies who work with CSR is strategically planned in relation to the companies’ co-workers. The second intention is to understand the relationship between CSR and HR in the participating companies. Finally, our aim is to analyze if CSR as a concept, is justice. Frame of reference and theory: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a topic of interest in today’s companies. CSR intentions are to take responsibility against the environment they are surrounded by, which involves different stakeholders. And how they can make sure that they work for a more sustainable society (Graafland, Mazereeuw-Van der Duijn Schouten, 2012). The perception of Justice is a concept that can be reached by social happiness (Kelsen, 2001) since one person’s perception can differ from the rest of those who experiencing a given act of fairness. The unhappiness of one person does not affect the fairness accepted by a larger group. Organizational Justice is a theory that explains how employees in companies perceive outcomes, processes, and relations with superiors and the communication with the company as fair or unfair (Cropanzano, Bowen, Gilliland, 2007). Empiricism and Results: The empirical material was collected through five different interviews with people in charge of the CSR in five different companies. The interviews did last somewhere in between 45 to 60 minutes. The result of the study shows us that companies, from an organizational perspective, have a fair way of working with their CSR against the employees. Even if they sometimes did not understand that they were doing it. The common feeling was that they did not reward their employees involved in some CSR projects, but they in one way or another surely did. Most of the companies had processes to understand their employee’s perceptions about their CSR-work and they all saw the importance of having a good communication between the employees and the company through the managers. When it comes to the relationship between CSR and HR our understanding is that most of the companies have a relation in someway, but HR is not directly involved, as some of them would like them to be. CSR is not completely perceived as a fair concept in the participating companies. This is because some outcomes and processes are unclear and are not totally worked out in those companies. This does not mean that all CSR in these companies is unfair but they surely need to work it out and develop it more.