Recognition that corporations are embedded within societies is playing an increasingly significant role in shaping strategic decision making in modern business organisations. Corporate community involvement (CCI) is becoming an increasingly salient aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and encompasses a diverse range of activities from philanthropic giving and employee volunteerism to cause related marketing and sponsorship, and supports a range of community needs from education and welfare to cultural and artistic development. As such it provides an ideal focus for exploring the economic, strategic, cultural and institutional influences on CCI. This thesis presents the first systematic analysis of CCI behaviours in Turkey. Turkey, as a secular, developing, largely Moslem country with a growing economy, provides a comparative research context that is culturally, economically and institutionally distinct from other environments within which CCI has been studied. A conceptual model has been developed based on the application of the behavioural theory of the firm. The model engenders the studies which aim to explain the situation of CCI in an institutional, cultural, and national context and through the CCI model, it is expected that the multicultural and complex characteristics of the CCI phenomenon can be understood. The findings suggest that shareholder/investors and community groups positively affect the companies in taking the decision to engage in CCI. The documented relationship between CCI, ownership type, and other firm characteristics also had important implications. This study finds that larger firms are more likely and smaller firms less likely to become involved in CCI activities. Local Turkish companies are keener to contribute large amounts in corporate giving than foreign ones. There is a strong orientation of CCI in Turkey to projects concerned with education, healthcare and the arts. The three common exclusions are politics, religion and animal rights. The majority of CCI expenditures in Turkey took the form of sponsorships. Engaging in CCI under a CSR department is not thepreferred choice in Turkey usually the companies wants to engage in their CCI activities under other business functions. The companies generally separate their philanthropic and sponsorhip activities from each other. Key types of CCI such as employee volunteerism, cash resources or gifts-in-kind, are undertaken under the auspices of these philantrophy and sponsorship and considered to be resources allocated to engage in these types of CCI. This thesis fills the gaps in the existing literature with respect to the lack of conceptual and empirical studies about the necessity of investigating the topic of CCI from a holistic perspective; the necessity of application of other theory(ies) which are able to describe the whole CCI situation instead of describing it piecemeal, and the necessity of discovering different institutional contexts because existing research is geographically narrowly drawn and usually concentrated in the U.S and Western Europe. The thesis is structured to fill these gaps and the contributions are made based on the lacks of the existing studies on CCI.

This research investigates the relationship between guanxi and Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) in the Chinese business environment. The thesis provides valuable insights into the motivation and management of CCI in China where the institutional and cultural context is radically different from the Western contexts. This thesis also places CCI in the context of guanxi and thus bridges the literatures on CCI and guanxi. Strategic motivation and management of CCI has been studied extensively in the context of Western countries. However, the extant literature offers limited insights into the motivation and management of CCI in the Chinese business environment. The Chinese business environment is characterised by a comparatively poor legal system and weak property rights. In such an environment guanxi – a system of personal connections that carry long-term social obligations – are held to play a significant role in business relationships in China. Earlier studies have found that guanxi is able to influence a variety of corporate behaviours. Nevertheless, no attempt has been made to investigate how CCI may have been influenced by guanxi in China. This research develops a conceptual model and six propositions, which explain how CCI is strategically tailored to initiate guanxi, and furthermore, facilitate inter-organisational relationship development through such guanxi in China. Based on an empirical case analysis of 148 CCI projects from three types of company; foreign, state-owned, and private, this research explores the relationship between CCI and guanxi and tests the conceptual model and propositions. The empirical data was collected deploying face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 65 companies (30 foreign companies, 9 state-owned companies, and 26 private companies) in China. The findings indicate that foreign companies’ and private companies’ CCI are motivated by guanxi development. Their CCI behaviours are strategically tailored to initiate guanxi with key stakeholders, and in particular with stakeholders who possess strong governmental backgrounds; and Chinese state-owned companies’ CCI behaviours are subject to little influence of guanxi development. While foreign companies used guanxi to facilitate their inter-organisational relationship development, private companies used guanxi to obtain formal institutional supports. From the findings, the conclusion is drawn that guanxi plays a significant role in motivating CCI engagement and shaping CCI behaviours in China, and, through such guanxi, CCI can be employed to facilitate inter-organisational relationship building and obtain formal institutional support.

Little is known about how employees in New Zealand companies view their organisation’s involvement in community-based initiatives that attempt to address areas of social needs. Understanding what people and organisations think from their frame of reference (Taylor & Bodgan, 1998) on ways of contributing to enhance community wellbeing is of high importance within a nation growing in diversity, and where everyone needs to fully participate in building a harmonious society (Ministry of Social Development, 2005; Swanson, 2002). Despite abundant extant research and many models already developed, frameworks in this area are fragmented. A case study approach has been adopted using one New Zealand Company to test a preliminary framework, Stakeholders and Organisational Enablers Relationship (SOER) Model, that analyses “the nature of relationships in terms of processes and outcomes for the business and its stakeholders” (Jones & Wicks, 1999, p. 207). From investigating the company’s community involvement from the employees’ perspective, results indicate that this particular company is engaging with the community, supporting and empowering employees to participate in the company’s community programme and thereby making a difference in the community by giving to the community. However, in general terms, solving recurring social, economic, political and psychological issues that influence social wellbeing requires cooperation between public, private, and voluntary sectors of the community (New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand Dept of Labour, & New Zealand Dept of Statistics, 2003; Roberts & King, 1989; Steane, 1999). While the results from the case company reported in this study demonstrate that community engagement is being taken seriously by exemplary private sector companies, generalisation of these findings would require further cross-sectional research across industries and organisations from all sectors: private, public and voluntary.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) prevail in their business communities and constitute the base of many nations’ economies. As a reason it is vital that SMEs show their active engagement and relatedness of their CSR activities making them at the core of their business strategies, as well as maintain their role as responsible citizens in their communities.CSR activities and practices being mainly developed by large corporations impede the way they can be applied on their smaller counterparts; ultimately leading to different results. SMEs require different solutions and run in different settings, which afford them unique opportunities to become sustainable enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of CSR engagement in Småland, Sweden. The study was divided into two parts, social (community wise) and environmental. We aimed to understand the reasons behind engagement and non-engagement in this matter. Also, it was important to find a pattern for future development of CSR among SMEs. We relied on previous research conducted for SMEs around Europe, and compared mainly the results from Sweden to our research findings. This study was largely done by using the quantitative survey method, where a questionnaire was designed to collect the results. Descriptive and exploratory statistics is at the core of interpreting the results. Some of the findings were confirmed by previous research while the rest were either unprecendeted or surprising, both in a positive and negative way. The CSR involvement was highly related to the size of the companies, in total more than half of the companies were involved to some extent. The main reasons for involvement in local communities were ethical as well as to satisfy own employees. The reasons for non-engagement were due to lack of resources, time and money, but also the fact that many companies simply never thought about engagement. When it comes to the environmental part, the results showed that companies act very responsibly. They are also aware and compliant to legislations and have environmental policies. Again, ethical reasons were the main driving force behind environmental concerns for the companies, but also the enhancement of the image was a chief reason. In general, companies do not seem to find economical benefits behind the engagement in CSR and less than half of the companies that engage in social responsibilities today are planning on continuing in the near future. Social involvement is voluntary and companies choose to do it mainly because of ethical reasons. On an overall basis, the engagement of SMEs in social activities is quite weak to moderate, while in environmental engagement the results are to some extent more optimistic. However, we cannot allege that a handful of Smålands SMEs see the full business benefits of engagement and as a result they cannot be said to be working towards ‘doing well by doing good’. Policy makers, municipalities and larger firms need to support the SMEs in their further engagement.

<p>Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) prevail in their business communities and constitute the base of many nations’ economies. As a reason it is vital that SMEs show their active engagement and relatedness of their CSR activities making them at the core of their business strategies, as well as maintain their role as responsible citizens in their communities.CSR activities and practices being mainly developed by large corporations impede the way they can be applied on their smaller counterparts; ultimately leading to different results. SMEs require different solutions and run in different settings, which afford them unique opportunities to become sustainable enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of CSR engagement in Småland, Sweden. The study was divided into two parts, social (community wise) and environmental. We aimed to understand the reasons behind engagement and non-engagement in this matter. Also, it was important to find a pattern for future development of CSR among SMEs. We relied on previous research conducted for SMEs around Europe, and compared mainly the results from Sweden to our research findings.</p><p>This study was largely done by using the quantitative survey method, where a questionnaire was designed to collect the results. Descriptive and exploratory statistics is at the core of interpreting the results. Some of the findings were confirmed by previous research while the rest were either unprecendeted or surprising, both in a positive and negative way. The CSR involvement was highly related to the size of the companies, in total more than half of the companies were involved to some extent. The main reasons for involvement in local communities were ethical as well as to satisfy own employees. The reasons for non-engagement were due to lack of resources, time and money, but also the fact that many companies simply never thought about engagement. When it comes to the environmental part, the results showed that companies act very responsibly. They are also aware and compliant to legislations and have environmental policies. Again, ethical reasons were the main driving force behind environmental concerns for the companies, but also the enhancement of the image was a chief reason. In general, companies do not seem to find economical benefits behind the engagement in CSR and less than half of the companies that engage in social responsibilities today are planning on continuing in the near future. Social involvement is voluntary and companies choose to do it mainly because of ethical reasons. On an overall basis, the engagement of SMEs in social activities is quite weak to moderate, while in environmental engagement the results are to some extent more optimistic. However, we cannot allege that a handful of Smålands SMEs see the full business benefits of engagement and as a result they cannot be said to be working towards ‘doing well by doing good’. Policy makers, municipalities and larger firms need to support the SMEs in their further engagement.</p>

This treatise presents a transcendental argument for corporate social responsibility. The argument is that corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is best understood as a collective moral practice that is a precondition for sustainable business. There are a number of theories and definitions of CSR in the contemporary business literature. These theories include considerations of economic, legal, social, and environmental notions of what a corporation ought to take responsibility for based on either motives or concerns of accountability for corporate acts. This work focuses on economic theories. I analyze the distinction between the technical terms "responsibility" and "accountability" found in these theories. This enables me to explicate the meaning of corporate responsibility as it relates to the conditions of sustainable business activity. These conditions necessarily include moral content. In other words, this is an applied ethics project. First, I inquire into the intellectual history of the broader sense of corporate responsibility and review various contemporary notions of corporate social responsibility. My concern is whether these notions presuppose broader forms of moral responsibility to others as an obligation, moral responsibility for acts, or to be held morally responsible (i.e., accountable) based on moral tendencies, particular motives, or resulting outcomes. This concern forms the basis of my consideration of the notions of individual and collective responsibility. The following work includes an analysis of the notion of human choice as a collective endeavor of institutional relationships and practice in the economic market system. I argue that corporate motives for moral interrelationships are necessarily implicit in biosocioeconomic multinational market enterprise. I conclude that an analysis of corporate community involvement may be found in a case study of Starbucks Coffee Company's efforts to practice CSR in particular coffee bean farming communities in developing countries.

This study explores the role of managers and manager-owners in decisions to engage the community and select particular social causes. This exploratory study aims to investigate why and how individuals impact on corporate community involvement (CCI) in their organisations. This is of significance in New Zealand as corporate philanthropic funding to the non-profit sector accounts for only three percent, which is low by international comparisons (Tennant, O’Brien & Sanders, 2008). The role of managers and their influence on CCI has been vociferously debated, with some arguing that personal impact should be limited and CCI decisions should be made solely according to profit maximisation. This perspective has used a rational and cognitive model of decision making paired with the Expectancy or reward/reinforcement theory in motivation to argue that management rationally considers the firm and then selects the best strategic option. This study turns to contemporary psychology to propose that managers may use ‘hot’ mental processing, including making CCI decisions based on values, emotions, ideologies and their own sense of identity. This study utilises a two-stage mixed method approach. The first stage investigated six respondents utilising a phenomenology approach to give a detailed description of each manager’s frame of reference and how this frame of reference impacted CCI outcomes. The second stage of this study progressed from a description to offering a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon, investigating the variables influencing how managers expressed their personal frame of reference in behaviour and the consequential impact on CCI decision making. This study found that managers and manager-owners held a strong sense of values, well defined ideologies, emotions, preferences and opinions regarding social issues which constructed the frame of reference surrounding their organisations community involvement. However, the existence of the personal frame of reference did not consistently impact the visible behaviour of individuals or their organisation’s corporate community involvement. Cold or rational thinking was shown to mitigate the impact of hot processing or alternatively post-justify decisions based on hot mental processing to validate the initial decision or alter how it was communicated within the organisation. Whether the personal frame of reference impacted CCI decision-making was influenced by the depth of the frame of reference, the internal mental dialogue regarding the acceptability of effectiveness of hot or cold decision making and task, organisational, and personal variables. This study offers a critique of extant research based on rational cognitive models and offers an alternative explanation for why and how managers champion CCI in their organisations. Further, through providing a deeper understanding of the roles of managers this thesis provides recommendations for non-profit organisations strategising to target the corporate sector for funding and provides some insights into how to mitigate or encourages the use of hot mental processing within CCI decision making.

Little is known about how employees in New Zealand companies view their organisation’s involvement in community-based initiatives that attempt to address areas of social needs. Understanding what people and organisations think from their frame of reference (Taylor & Bodgan, 1998) on ways of contributing to enhance community wellbeing is of high importance within a nation growing in diversity, and where everyone needs to fully participate in building a harmonious society (Ministry of Social Development, 2005; Swanson, 2002). Despite abundant extant research and many models already developed, frameworks in this area are fragmented. A case study approach has been adopted using one New Zealand Company to test a preliminary framework, Stakeholders and Organisational Enablers Relationship (SOER) Model, that analyses “the nature of relationships in terms of processes and outcomes for the business and its stakeholders” (Jones & Wicks, 1999, p. 207). From investigating the company’s community involvement from the employees’ perspective, results indicate that this particular company is engaging with the community, supporting and empowering employees to participate in the company’s community programme and thereby making a difference in the community by giving to the community. However, in general terms, solving recurring social, economic, political and psychological issues that influence social wellbeing requires cooperation between public, private, and voluntary sectors of the community (New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand Dept of Labour, & New Zealand Dept of Statistics, 2003; Roberts & King, 1989; Steane, 1999). While the results from the case company reported in this study demonstrate that community engagement is being taken seriously by exemplary private sector companies, generalisation of these findings would require further cross-sectional research across industries and organisations from all sectors: private, public and voluntary.

This study explores the role of managers and manager-owners in decisions to engage the community and select particular social causes. This exploratory study aims to investigate why and how individuals impact on corporate community involvement (CCI) in their organisations. This is of significance in New Zealand as corporate philanthropic funding to the non-profit sector accounts for only three percent, which is low by international comparisons (Tennant, O’Brien & Sanders, 2008). The role of managers and their influence on CCI has been vociferously debated, with some arguing that personal impact should be limited and CCI decisions should be made solely according to profit maximisation. This perspective has used a rational and cognitive model of decision making paired with the Expectancy or reward/reinforcement theory in motivation to argue that management rationally considers the firm and then selects the best strategic option. This study turns to contemporary psychology to propose that managers may use ‘hot’ mental processing, including making CCI decisions based on values, emotions, ideologies and their own sense of identity. This study utilises a two-stage mixed method approach. The first stage investigated six respondents utilising a phenomenology approach to give a detailed description of each manager’s frame of reference and how this frame of reference impacted CCI outcomes. The second stage of this study progressed from a description to offering a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon, investigating the variables influencing how managers expressed their personal frame of reference in behaviour and the consequential impact on CCI decision making. This study found that managers and manager-owners held a strong sense of values, well defined ideologies, emotions, preferences and opinions regarding social issues which constructed the frame of reference surrounding their organisations community involvement. However, the existence of the personal frame of reference did not consistently impact the visible behaviour of individuals or their organisation’s corporate community involvement. Cold or rational thinking was shown to mitigate the impact of hot processing or alternatively post-justify decisions based on hot mental processing to validate the initial decision or alter how it was communicated within the organisation. Whether the personal frame of reference impacted CCI decision-making was influenced by the depth of the frame of reference, the internal mental dialogue regarding the acceptability of effectiveness of hot or cold decision making and task, organisational, and personal variables. This study offers a critique of extant research based on rational cognitive models and offers an alternative explanation for why and how managers champion CCI in their organisations. Further, through providing a deeper understanding of the roles of managers this thesis provides recommendations for non-profit organisations strategising to target the corporate sector for funding and provides some insights into how to mitigate or encourages the use of hot mental processing within CCI decision making.

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