From corporate social responsibility to chain social responsibility: consequences for chain organization

Abstract

In both the political and the scientific field the ideas about corporate social responsibility (CSR) have changed over the last 10 years. These changes are more or less connected with the stages in the environmental policy of firms as De Ron et al. (2002) describe them – put in order, administer and integrate – and with the development of political ideals about CSR. The relation between the social responsibilities of firms and chain organization is founded on the ‘credence’ characteristics of social responsibility. These credence characteristics make market information necessary to ensure market information is symmetric in every stage of the production chain; otherwise market failure is unavoidable and inferior products will drive out good-quality products. The incorporation of transparency on CSR into a chain is possible in a product-oriented (LCA) or a company-oriented way (company-certifying systems). The integration of CSR in chains is accompanied by management efforts, both within and without the company. Firms must implement the strategy in their whole enterprise, from top management down to shop-floor workers. This is often done with the help of existing quality management concepts such as INK. In extra-company management (chain cooperation) both the content (what) and process (how) are important. The last part of the paper covers in more detail how to manage the chain with respect to CSR. In this part we will discuss competence analysis and monitoring with the help of the model of Doz and Hamel (1998). To transform this static model into a dynamic one we propose using the model of Ring and Van der Ven (1994) for the cyclical development of cooperation and the model of Lewicki and Bunker (1996) for the build-up and development of trust. To unite these more general models with the more specific approach in the field of CSR we integrated cooperation with the recently developed European Corporate Sustainability Framework. Effectively, we chose a company approach and the integration of CSR with quality-assurance models, because this approach is a promising way to start CSR in chains and manage it.