“Buying” Corporate Social Responsibility: Organisational Identity Orientation as a Determinant of Practice Adoption

CITATION

Wickert, C., Vaccaro, A., & Cornelissen, J. (2017). “Buying” Corporate Social Responsibility: Organisational Identity Orientation as a Determinant of Practice Adoption. Journal of Business Ethics, 142(3), 497–514

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ABSTRACT
In this paper, we explore the empirical phenomenon
of large multinational corporations (MNCs)
acquiring socially oriented enterprises, such as the Unilever–
Ben & Jerry’s, and the L‘Ore´al-The Body Shop
takeovers. When focusing on these cases, we argue that
variance in organisational identity orientations, as the
dominant logic of managers within the acquiring organisations,
determines whether MNCs consider the transaction
not only in financial terms, but also decide to adopt ‘‘social
technology’’ in the form of CSR-related organisational
practices from the acquired unit. We argue that in turn based
on a ‘‘match’’ with the organisational identity of the
acquired unit, managers will opt to adopt CSR practices
more fully or selectively, and in more substantial or symbolic
ways. With these propositional arguments we not only
aim to contribute to the literature on CSR adoption by
MNCs, but we also set out to develop theory on the widespread
but so far undocumented phenomenon of MNCs
‘‘buying CSR’’ by acquiring socially oriented enterprises.


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