How are ideas regarding Corporate Social Responsibility translated to practice within a corporation?

Abstract

The negative sustainable development has emerged as one of the biggest challenges for corporations' future operations. This emerging situation has influenced organizations worldwide to introduce programs and documents about Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR] to guide corporations through how to control and counteract the negative sustainable development. Through the mode of translation this thesis will attempt to explain how ideas of CSR travel within a corporation, and how corporations translate ideas into practice. The mode of translation tries to explain the process of translating ideas into practice. For example, it posits that the blueprint, which represents the initial idea of CSR, and in this case is exemplified by the programs and documents introduced by the United Nations and Gothenburg municipality, might in reality not be actualized in the intended way. This is because agents, i.e., people tend to translate and transform CSR ideas. Three corporations in the region of Gothenburg will be participating in this thesis. To analyze the topic of interest, qualitative research with a comparative approach, and an adaptive approach will be conducted. This thesis enhances the knowledge in CSR and translation as it provides a clear understanding on how corporations interpret and translate ideas of CSR into practice in their corporation. This thesis shows that there is room for improvement for all participating corporations as CSR is an ever changing and developing topic. Furthermore, the thesis shows that CSR related documents tend to be ambiguous, leading to problems in the translation process for the corporations’ subject to this thesis, and hence needs clarification.