An Integrational Framework of Organizational Moral Development, Legitimacy, and Corporate Responsibility: A Longitudinal, Intersectoral Analysis of Citizenship Reports

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12104
• Published date: 01 December 2016
• Date: 01 December 2016

An Integrational Framework

of Organizational Moral

Development, Legitimacy,

and Corporate Responsibility:

A Longitudinal, Intersectoral

Analysis of Citizenship

Reports

GABRIELLA LEWIS, SERGIO PALACIOS, AND

MARCUS A. VALENZUELA

ABSTRACT

In this article, we outline a unique conceptual framework

connecting legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995), theories of

corporate responsibility (Brummer, 1991), and levels of

organizational moral development based on Kohlberg’s

(1971) moral development stages. In addition, based on

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) categories, we found

empirical support for our framework, by content analyz-

ing Fortune 500 corporate citizenship reports from four

different industries (i.e., chemicals, motor vehicle/auto

parts, pharmaceutical, and utilities), at three data points

Gabriella Lewis is a PhD Candidate in the Management Department, College of Business at

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. E-mail: glewis08@nmsu.edu. Sergio Palacios is a

Visiting Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies in the Greehey School of Business at St.

Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX. E-mail: spalacios3@stmarytx.edu. Marcus A. Valenzuela is

an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing, School of Business &

Public Administration at California State University, Bakersfield, CA. E-mail: mvalenzuela12@

csub.edu.

V

C2016 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by

Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

Business and Society Review 121:4 593–623

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(i.e., 2002, 2007, and 2012). Our analysis indicates that

motor vehicle/auto parts and chemicals industries are at

a higher developmental level, and portray moral legitima-

cy along with social demandingness corporate responsi-

bility in recent years; while the pharmaceutical and

utilities sectors are at a lower developmental level, show-

ing signs of pragmatic legitimacy, alongside classical and

stakeholder corporate responsibility strategies. This arti-

cle contributes to the current organizational moral devel-

opment literature by developing and finding empirical

support of a conceptual framework of organizational mor-

al development, legitimacy, and corporate responsibility.

In particular, our findings provide a deeper understand-

ing of the differences in moral development levels across

four focal industries over a 10-year timespan.

We intend the term “moral” to be understood in the restricted

sense of referring to situations which call for judgments such as

right or wrong, duty and obligation, having a right, fairness, etc.,

although such judgments may (or may not) involve either or both

of the other two basic concepts or their derivatives. (Kohlberg and

Hersh 1977, p. 58).

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the notion of “doing good while making a profit”

view of corporate responsibility (CR) has become an increasingly

important aspect of business in terms of reputation, profitability,

and other performance metrics (e.g., Blodgett et al. 2014; Walker

and Dyck 2014). Recently, researchers have explored CR in different

contexts, such as weak economies (Rahim 2013) and less-regulated

environments (Blodgett et al. 2014). Other researchers have devel-

oped conceptual frameworks that advance our understanding of CR

(e.g., Peters et al. 2014). While previous research has extensively

covered various aspects of CR efforts and reporting there is a notice-

able shortage of theoretical frameworks to describe and explain CR

patterns across time and across sectors. For instance, the current

literature explores CR for specific sectors such as banking (Branco

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