Professional Associations as Communities of Practice: Exploring the Boundaries of Ethics and Compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12120
• Author: Angeli Weller

Professional Associations as

Communities of Practice:

Exploring the Boundaries of

Ethics and Compliance and

Corporate Social

Responsibility

ANGELI WELLER

ABSTRACT

For more than a decade, scholars and practitioners have

noted the disconnection between E&C and CSR practices

in US corporations and called for their alignment. There

is scant literature on why this lack of alignment persists.

This article applies communities of practice theory to illu-

minate the separate learning trajectories that the E&C

and CSR fields in the US have taken over the past twenty

five years, anchored by their respective professional asso-

ciations. This article provides an important perspective on

the role that n, boundaries, ethics and compliance, corpo-

rate social responsibility communities of practice play in

reifying the knowledge and competencies within E&C and

CSR, and the boundaries to collaboration that exist

between their managers and practices. It also calls

Angeli Weller is a strategist and researcher through Weller Worldwide and co-director of the

Blue Sky Institute at Boise State University. She has a PhD from Copenhagen Business School

and an MBA from Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. E-mail: angeli@

wellerworldwide.net.

V

C2017 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 122:3 359–392

bs_bs_banner

attention to the fact that alignment is not the only alter-

nate trajectory that these practices and their communi-

ties may take in the future, and five distinct evolutionary

paths are explored.

In comparing 2014’s “Most Ethical Companies” published by

Ethisphere Magazine

1

to the “Best Corporate Citizens” pub-

lished by Corporate Responsibility Magazine,

2

only 20% of

companies appear on both rankings. The survey methodologies

reveal that companies are judged on a wide range of responsible

business practices, with the “ethical” companies competing on

ethics and compliance, governance and reputation efforts, and the

“corporate citizens” being judged on social responsibility issues

including environment, human rights, and economic development.

Yet a study by the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University

found that in companies with both Ethics and Compliance (E&C)

and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, their manag-

ers rarely communicate or collaborate.

3

The conceptual relationship between business ethics and CSR is

one that scholars have debated for many years, and yet most pro-

pose some relationship between them. For example, Carroll’s pyra-

mid folds business ethics and corporate social responsibility

together into the ethics tier,

4

though it could be argued that in

practice, E&C also includes the legal tier, and CSR also includes

the philanthropy tier. Mason and Simmons explain ethical busi-

ness practices as the “internal manifestation of CSR.”

5

In short, it

is reasonable to conclude that the debate surrounding the con-

cepts of business ethics and CSR and their relationship has not

been clearly resolved in the literature, but that most scholars

understand them to be related in some way.

There is also a debate about whether E&C practices embrace the

full scope of the concept of business ethics, but this discussion is

left for another article. Instead, Schwartz and Carroll’s wide and

narrow definitions of business ethics and CSR helps to express the

range of meaning they embody and rejects the idea of a singular

definition.

6

Business ethics can be as narrowly defined as legal

compliance, placing it squarely and solely in Carroll’s legal tier in

the pyramid, or more widely defined to also include values and

integrity. CSR, conversely, can be singularly defined as the idea of

do no harm, or more broadly defined as the idea of having a

360 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW

positive impact on both business and society. This approach helps

to effectively communicate the wide range of meaning that may be

assigned to E&C and CSR practices.

Seeing these conceptual and practical ties, some scholars and

practitioners have called for greater alignment between E&C and

CSR practices. Painter-Morland critiques the separation of busi-

ness and ethical interests writ large, suggesting that when busi-

ness decisions and stakeholder relationships are driven from a set

of core values, integrity of actions and practices are more likely to

follow. As such, she explicitly calls for alignment in E&C and CSR

practices as part of a move toward greater organizational congru-

ence.

7

Petry adds to this argument, suggesting that the separation

of E&C and CSR practices results in “blind spots...redundancy,

confusion, mixed messages and waste.”

8

Rowe called for E&C officers to find better alignment with the

CSR counterparts suggesting that, “When a company’s manage-

ment starts to look beyond compliance, inevitably they develop an

awareness of issues that bring them in touch with CSR. Whether

they choose to address them is another matter.”

9

His argument is

that the themes of risk, (stakeholder) relationships and reputation

are the ties that link E&C and CSR. Additionally, Rowe offers four

potential impacts that could result from alignment, including a

more holistic view of a company’s approach to ethics and social

responsibility, better board and senior management oversight and

leadership on key issues, improved risk management and opportu-

nity identification, and more efficient stewardship of company

resources. And yet, little has changed within companies over the

past 10 years since his call was issued. Rowe suggests that both

the history of the practices as well as resistance from managers to

yield responsibility and power may be contributing to a lack of

alignment between them, but these possibilities are not explored in

detail.

In fact, the barriers to alignment have not yet been comprehen-

sively examined in the business and society literature. This article

extends current discussions in the field by describing some of the

barriers that may exist between E&C and CSR managers and prac-

tices. Specifically, it applies a theoretical lens from the organiza-

tional learning literature, called communities of practice, to the

fields surrounding E&C and CSR in the United States. Leveraging

the theory’s model of community evolution, it suggests the fields

361ANGELI WELLER