Corporate social responsibility movement in an emerging economy: an institutional and social movement explanation

• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Shashank Mittal
• Date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2030

ACADEMIC PAPER

Corporate social responsibility movement in an emerging

economy: an institutional and social movement explanation

Shashank Mittal

Department of OB & HR, Rajagiri Business

School, Kakkanad, Kochi, Kerala, India

Correspondence

Shashank Mittal, Department of OB & HR,

Rajagiri Business School, Kakkanad, Kochi,

682039, Kerala, India.

Email: shashankmittal1107@gmail.com

This study explores the CSR movement in India from the perspective of institutional

theory and social movement theory. The paper draws important theoretical frame-

work in the field of CSR in emerging economies. The study takes entirely new theo-

retical perspective of social movement theory and combines it with

institutionalization to give important insights to the adoption of CSR as a law in India.

Propositions are developed by drawing on the role of organizational actors and their

interactions with institutional forces; and also on the interaction among the different

forces. First, these interactions are examined in dyadic form and then the overall

effects of these interactions are proposed. It is examined how different actors inter-

act differently with the institutional forces, and how the dominant or competing

forces interact with each other to in turn influence the actors. Another set of propo-

sitions examine how the organizational strategies shaped the CSR movement in India

and how they have been or are likely to be shaped by the CSR movement in India.

Implications for public affairs and policy making are drawn for CSR.

1|INTRODUCTION

The primary objectives of this study are explicated in the following

three points. First, there is scarcity of literature in the emerging econ-

omies context which combines the perspective of social movement

literature, institutional theory literature and organizational literature

to understand the phenomenon in a comprehensive manner. This

study aims to combine the perspectives from these three streams of

literature to enrich the understanding of an important phenomenon

taking place in India, an emerging economy in South Asia. Some of the

recent studies on emerging economies highlight the importance of

studying phenomenon in the context of emerging economies (Mittal,

2019; Mittal, Sengupta, Agrawal, & Gupta, 2018; Singh & Mittal,

2019; Singh, Mittal, & Pradhan, 2019).

Second, India saw a big leap in which Corporate Social Responsi-

bility (CSR) was mandated by incorporation in the newly enacted

Companies Act, 2013. This opened a new chapter for Indian organiza-

tions and institutions. But CSR is not a law, becoming a law is just an

outcome. CSR is a social movement in itself which saw the participa-

tion of all institutional stakeholders and organizations. This social

movement of CSR needs to be examined from the perspective of

institutional theory and how various institutional actors interact

among themselves and with organizations to make organizations

accept and adopt social responsibility as a practice and law. There are

hardly any studies which look at CSR in the Indian context as a social

movement from the institutional perspective. This work aims at study-

ing the Indian CSR social movement from the institutional perspective

by deriving from social movement and institutional theory literature.

Third, organizations are dynamic in nature and organizational

strategies interact with institutional forces to shape their environment

or are shaped by them. Following the approach of inductive reasoning

and deriving from the individual case of Indian CSR as a social move-

ment, this paper develops interesting propositions for this specific

context. It is attempted to combine the different literatures on social

movement, institutional theory and strategy to formulate interesting

propositions. These propositions are developed by drawing on the

role of organizational actors and their interaction with institutional

forces; and also on the interaction among different forces represented

by their respective actors. First, these interactions are examined in

dyadic form and then the overall effects of these interactions are

seen. The three pillars of institutional forces - cultured cognitive, nor-

mative, and regulatory (Scott, 2008) have differential effects in their

Received: 4 July 2019 Accepted: 11 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2030

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2030. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of6

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2030