Can Corporate Heritage reduce Stakeholders’ CSR Scepticism-an exploratory study?
Amjad Al-Amad, Christina Scandelius and Sharifah Alwi
Brunel University London
Overview: According to the literature, stakeholders’ CSR scepticism is a major hurdle that
limits and sometimes prevents the achievement of CSR business goals. This working paper
attempts to relate between the corporate heritage brand and the corporate social responsibility
(CSR) concepts to overcome the problem of CSR scepticism.
Purpose of the research: Following Urde, Greyser, and Balmer’s (2007) heritage quotient
model, and Rindell, Snatos, and Lima’s (2015) conceptualization of consumers’ corporate
image heritage, this working paper aims to investigate whether the heritage of corporate
heritage brands and the authenticity, affinity, and trust that characterise these brands can be
extended to their CSR program to overcome the challenge of CSR scepticism. In addition to
this, the previous literature have had only investigated the phenomenon in the context of oldmiddle-aged corporate heritage institutions, this research aims to re-investigate the
phenomenon in the context of young-aged corporate heritage brand which expected to reveal
new findings. Furthermore, the current literature of corporate heritage and CSR have heavily
focused on consumers, neglecting other stakeholders groups such as NGOs which are
increasingly becoming an important player and partner when it comes to CSR.
Literature review: Currently and due to its marketing and financial proven feasibility, most
businesses across all sectors and markets and regardless of the size factor are keen on
practicing the CSR. In line with Caroll's (1979; 1991) model, specifically, the high priority he
assigned to the corporate business responsibility, and with Lantos’ (2001) conceptualization
of CSR, which called for an instrumental strategical adoption of CSR rather than the
normative altruistic CSR adoption. We believe that businesses should seek to generate direct
and indirect business benefits out of their CSR efforts. But in order to achieve this, and as
stakeholders generally seem to be tolerant with strategic-driven CSR programs that embed
both the self-serving and the other-serving motives (Vlachos, Theotokis, and Panagopoulos,
2010; Skarmeas and Leonidou, 2013), companies should make sure that their CSR programs
look authentic and driven by sincere motives and intentions towards communities (Rekom,
Go, and Calter, 2014). As a result of this complex and contradictory CSR related needs, the
area of stakeholders’ perceptions and responses to CSR initiatives emerged and has become
one of the most important aspects of the general CSR literature. One of these area topics is
the topic of stakeholders’ suspicion and scepticism of CSR which has been repeatedly
reported as a challenging factor that hinders the achievement of CSR goals. Thus and
building on the consensually agreed upon fact that corporate heritage institutions/brands are
blessed with high stakeholders affinity and high authenticity and trust (Urde et al, 2007), we
believe that combining the CSR communications with corporate heritage brand
communications will enhance the corporate heritage brand CSR authenticity and will help in
generating strategic CSR attributions and thus a heritage brand can overcome the hurdle of
stakeholders’ CSR scepticism.
Methodology: as the current understanding of the corporate heritage phenomenon is still in
nascent stage of development (Burghausen and Balmer, 2015), and due to the high
subjectivity that characterise humans perception in general and their CSR perception and
scepticism in specific, this research will adopt an interpretivist inductive and deductive
research stance and will make use of the qualitative research methods, Specifically, the semistructured interviews, as this method is both good for exploratory and explanatory research
(Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2009). All this will be adopted within the embedded case
study research strategy boundaries, which is the best to investigate a phenomenon (Yin,
2003).
Main findings: stakeholders’ scepticism of a corporate heritage brand CSR can be overcome
or lowered by combining between corporate heritage communications and CSR
communications. This effect is believed to be mediated by CSR perceived authenticity and
stakeholders’ strategic CSR attributions
Research contribution: this research is expected to extend the usefulness of corporate
heritage theory by: 1- Applying the current understanding of the concept in the CSR field to
solve one of the field’s biggest challenges, the CSR communications and specifically
stakeholders’ CSR scepticism 2- re-investigating the phenomenon in the context of young
heritage brand, a context that has never been studied before. 3- Adopting a pure interpretivist
research stance in investigating NGOs heads’ perceptions of corporate heritage brand and
their CSR for the first time.
Key References:
- Burghausen, M., & Balmer, J. M. T. (2015). Corporate heritage identity stewardship: A
corporate marketing perspective. European Journal of Marketing, 49(1), 22-61.
doi:10.1108/EJM-03-2013-0169.
- Carroll, A. B. (1991). The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral
management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons, 34(4), 39-48.
- Lantos, G. P. (2001). The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility. Journal of
Consumer Marketing, 18(7), 595-632.
- Rindell, A., Santos, F. P., & De Lima, A. P. (2015). Two sides of a coin: Connecting
corporate brand heritage to consumers’ corporate image heritage. Journal of Brand
Management, 22(5), 467-484.
- Skarmeas, D., & Leonidou, C. N. (2013). When consumers doubt, watch out! the role of
CSR skepticism. Journal of Business Research, 66(10), 1831-1838.
- Urde, M., Greyser, S. A., & Balmer, J. M. T. (2007). Corporate brands with a heritage.
Journal of Brand Management, 15(1), 4-19. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2550106
- Van Rekom, J., Go, F. M., & Calter, D. M. (2014). Communicating a company's positive
impact on society-can plausible explanations secure authenticity? Journal of Business
Research, 67(9), 1831-1838.
- Vlachos, P. A., Theotokis, A., & Panagopoulos, N. G. (2010). Sales force reactions to
corporate social responsibility: Attributions, outcomes, and the mediating role of
organizational trust. Industrial Marketing Management, 39(7), 1207-1218.