Cultural Analysis of Corporate Social Action

• Author: Harry T. Hall,James E. Mattingly,Craig VanSandt
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12159
• Date: 01 December 2018

Business and Society Review 123:4 661–696

© 2018 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Busi ness Ethics at Bentley Uni versity. Published by

Wiley Period icals, Inc., 350 Main St reet, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9 600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U K. DOI: 10.1111/basr.12159

Cultural Analysis of Corporate

Social Action

JAMES E. MATT INGLY, HARRY T. HALL and CRAIG VANSANDT

ABSTR ACT

Previous studies of corporate envi ronmental and socia l

action identify exactly t hree simi lar patterns of activ ity.

They provide divergent structura l explanat ions for these

patterns, a s networks of institut ional const raint, and net-

works of local inter-dependence, respectively. A theory of

sociocultural v iability, known in a nthropology and policy

science as Cultural T heory, explains that socia l systems

consist of four patterns of social interaction, shaped by

two distinct str uctural factors. Our ow n analysis of 45

items of environmental, socia l, and governance factors

reconcile extant studies’ fi ndings with Cu ltural Theor y’s

expectations. A lthough earlier studies of corporate socia l

action observed only th ree patterns of activit y, our analy-

sis uncovered the fourth, and t hat diverging str uctural

explanations of ea rlier studies are part ial and comple-

mentary, clarif ied by Cultural T heory. Our call for furt her

study leverages the normative dimension of Cultu ral

Theory, which specifies policy processes t hat privilege

human decency over parochia l preference functions.

James E. Matti ngly is a associate profess or of Management in the Man agement Department,

University of Nor thern Iowa Cedar Fa lls, IA. E-ma il: jim.matting ly@uni.edu. Har ry T. Hall is a

associate profes sor of Communication i n the Communicat ion Studies Depart ment, University

of Northern Iow a Cedar Fal ls, IA. E-ma il: tom.hal l@uni.edu. Cra ig VanSandt is a a ssociate

professor of Mana gement in the Manageme nt Department, Univer sity of Northern Iowa Ce dar

Falls, IA . E-mail: craig.vansa ndt@uni.edu.

662 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW

On August 11, 1985, a Union Carbide chemical plant at

Institute, West Virginia accidentally relea sed a deadly

chemical, Aldica rb oxime, into the a ir surroundin g the

plant. Fortunately, no one was killed, although approxim ately 135

were hospitalized (Per row 1994). What is noteworthy regar ding this

event is not that it is exceptional, but that it is not. Just several

months earlier, a similar accident at the same company’s Bhopal,

India plant kil led thousands, prompting the U.S. Occupational

Safety and Healt h Administ ration (OSHA) to invest igate the com-

pany’s U.S.based plants in Charleston and Institute, West Virginia,

both of which had experienced sim ilar accidents. Both OSH A, and

Union Carbide’s own inspection team, independently assesse d the

plant was safe, just before the August, 1985 accident, although

there had been 28 major leaks at the Inst itute plant in the 5 years

preceding the Bhopal disa ster (Shrivastava 1987).

Theories of normal accidents (Perrow 1999) and normal wron gdo-

ing (Palmer 2012) have emerged to explain phenomena underlying

commonplace occurrences of unintended har mful consequences of

modern industrial orga nization. Perrow a rgues that catastr ophic

accidents result from complex, tightly coupled systems, a conse-

quence of managerial rat ionality, not counter to it. Palmer’s theory

of normal wrongdoi ng suggest s that it is ne ither “bad apples” nor

“bad barrels” which account for systematic wrongdoing, but that

they result from “the ful l range of structu res and processes that

shape behavior in organiz ations.” (Palmer 2012, p. 9) In these for-

mulations, social har ms from business activit y are often not the

result of deviant actors, but of the collective action of rational i ndi-

viduals, in the course of well-intentioned behavior.

If these are usefu l conceptions of social and envi ronmental risks

posed by business, then research a nd theory ai med at informin g

individual-level interventions may be i neffectual in fosterin g prog-

ress. Recent studies have established that corporate envi ronmen-

tal and socia l action tends to cluster into various forms (Bans al

and Roth 2000; Br ickson 2005) and that stable tendencies are

the norm, whereas change is ra re (Shropshire and Hi llman 20 07).

Moreover, these tendencies may be a function of collective action

(Brickson 2005; Schein 1999, 2004) instead of indiv idual values

(Hemingway a nd Maclagan 2004) or executive comm itment (Miles

1982, 1987), conformin g to expectations of social thin kers that col-

lective action is a function of collective-level mecha nisms, instead

663MATTINGLY, HALL, AND VANSANDT

of individual intentions (Du rkheim 1938; White 1959, 1975), and

avoiding the logical er ror of reductionism (Rousseau 1985).

We seek an approach to the study of corporate social action that

identifies organiz ation-level social action patterns and underly-

ing structures account ing for them. Our hope is that, over ti me,

research can i nform constructi ve interventions, at the level of

organization str uctures and processes. Th is project’s aims, there-

fore, are, first, to establish a formulat ion of social action patterns,

derived from literature, which mi ght provide clues to structural

elements that shape these patterns. These soci al and structu ral

elements place constraints on the strategies t hat organizations a re

likely to implement. Our second aim is to ex plicate the normative

dimension of those constraints, by ex posing that ex treme cultures

can lead to social dysf unction.

To accomplish these aims, we first int roduce two empirical

studies of corporate environmental a nd social action (Ba nsal and

Roth 2000; Brickson 20 05). Their qualitative a nalyses provide

rich, descriptive materia ls for comparison with empir ical studies

employing the cultura l approach we advocate. Second, we describe

two empirical studies gu ided by cultural theor y, as a backdrop

for explainin g its features. Third, we demonstrate the usef ulness

of cultural theor y’s guidance by applying it to our ow n analysis

of patterns among corporate envi ronmental, social, a nd gover-

nance activities i ndicated in the Ki nder, Lydenberg, Domini Social

Ratings data. I n doing so, we propose relevant elements of social

structure that m ight shape the configu ration of corporate social

action patterns we observed, guided by t he cultural theor y we

introduc ed.

CORPORATE SOCIA L ACTION PATTERNS

Two recent empirical studies sought to establish reasons for corpo-

rate environmental responsiveness (B ansal and Roth 2000; hereaf-

ter Bansal) and a t ypology of socia l identity orientations (Brickson

2005; hereafter Brickson). Both projects obser ved exactly th ree

forms of corporate responsiveness, described in rema rkably simi-

lar terms (Table 1). Bansal exa mined envi ronmental responsive-

ness using qualitative a nalysis of inter views, archiva l documents,

and part icipant observation of food retai lers, auto manufacturers,