Andrew Crane

Corporate Citizenship: Toward an Extended Theoretical Conceptualization

We critically examine the content of contemporary understandings of corporate citizenship and locate them within the extant body of research dealing with business-society relations. Our main purpose is to realize a theoretically informed definition of corporate citizenship that is descriptively robust and conceptually distinct from existing concepts in the literature. Specifically, our extended perspective exposes the element of “citizenship” and conceptualizes corporate citizenship as the administration of a bundle of individual citizenship rights—social, civil, and political—conventionally granted and protected by governments.

Green marketing: legend, myth, farce or prophesy?

Purpose – To review the history of “green marketing” since the early 1990s and to provide a critique of both theory and practice in order to understand how the marketing discipline may yet contribute to progress towards greater sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines elements of green marketing theory and practice over the past 15 years by employing the logic of the classic paper from 1985 “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried” of seeking to identify “false marketings” that have hampered progress. Findings – That much of what has been commonly referred to as “green marketing” has been underpinned by neither a marketing, nor an environmental, philosophy. Five types of misconceived green marketing are identified and analysed: green spinning, green selling, green harvesting, enviropreneur marketing and compliance marketing. Practical implications – Provides an alternative viewpoint on a much researched, but still poorly understood area of marketing, and explains why the anticipated “green revolution” in marketing prefaced by market research findings, has not more radically changed products and markets in practice. Originality/value – Helps readers to understand why progress towards a more sustainable economy has proved so difficult, and outlines some of the more radical changes in thought and practice that marketing will need to adopt before it can make a substantive contribution towards greater sustainability.

The Greening of Organization Culture: Managers View on the Depth, Degree and Diffusion of Change

The green management literature repeatedly argues that in order to behave in a sustainable manner, organizational actions will need to go beyond technical fixes and embrace new environmentally responsible values, beliefs and behaviors. In this context, developing sustainability is frequently viewed as largely dependent on the extent of green culture change in organizations. However, empirical evidence for such a change in culture is not apparent, although much anecdotal support has been cited. Seeks to address some of the shortcomings in extant literature and supplies contemporary evidence of managers’ perceptions of the extent to which the green culture change is occurring and of factors acting as barriers or facilitators to such change. Begins with a review of the literature pertaining to organizational culture and greening. Following this, details the research design and methodology. Thereafter, lays out the findings of the interviews in detail. Finally, discusses these findings and suggests a number of implications, conclusions and directions for further research.

Addressing Sustainability and Consumption

This article examines issues of sustainability in relation to consumption. The authors first discuss the notion of sustainable consumption and the link between individual consumer behavior and the macroconcerns of understanding and influencing aggregate consumption levels. The authors then reflect on the differing perspectives on whether consumption patterns are in need of adjustment. In the main part of the article, the authors then explore the issue of sustainable consumption through the lens of two broadly differing conceptualizations of consumption itself, discussing four main questions for each of these conceptualizations: (1) How is this view of consumption linked to prevalent current understandings of sustainable consumption? (2) How would sustainability be achieved following this perspective on consumption? (3) To whom would this view of sustainable consumption appeal or not appeal? and (4) What would the roles and responsibilities of different social actors be in achieving sustainability following this view of consumption?

Facing the Backlash: Green Marketing and Strategic Reorientation in the 1990s

This paper discusses green marketing strategies in the context faced by businesses in the middle to late 1990s. The literature suggests that this context has been characterized by a consumer backlash against green marketing, which has been created by perceived problems in the areas of green product performance and green claims in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Evidence is reported from a qualitative study which investigated corporate perceptions of this context and revealed the strategic orientations which have subsequently been employed by green marketers. The findings suggest that managers do indeed perceive the backlash to have occurred and to have been caused by the factors posited. It is argued that these understandings have assumed the role of myths in shaping organizational perceptions of the green marketing context. Four subsequent strategic routes are identified in the paper, namely passive greening, muted greening, niche greening and collaborative greening. These are described in some detail and managers’ justifications for them are presented. It is shown that each of these strategies might be appropriate for particular situations in the context of the backlash and some of the limitations of the green marketing literature in this respect are highlighted. Finally, some discussion is provided regarding the appropriateness of these strategies in the future and potential avenues for further research are identified.

Corporate Greening as Amoralization

This paper explores the moral dimension of corporate greening. Drawing on extensive case-study evidence from three organizational types, the proposition is advanced that there is a tendency in corporations for greening to be accompanied by a process of amoralization, i.e. a lack of moral meaning and significance for organization members in relation to the natural environment. By presenting corporate greening in terms of issue selling, specific processes of amoralization are identified in the symbolic action and impression management behaviours of policy champions. Variations in these processes across organizational types are explored and potential explanations are advanced with recourse to the organizational politics, power and culture literatures. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the actual and potential role played by morality in advancing corporate greening.

Societal marketing and morality

Societal marketing emerged in the early 1970s, promising a more socially responsible and ethical model for marketing. While the societal marketing concept has attracted its adherents and critics, the literature on societal marketing has remained sketchy and underdeveloped, particularly with respect to its underlying (and largely implicit) moral agenda. By making the moral basis of societal marketing more explicit, this article primarily seeks to offer a moral critique of the societal marketing concept. By situating discussion within notions of psychological and ethical egoism, argues that, in moral terms at least, the societal marketing concept is clearly an extension of the marketing concept, rather than a fundamental reconstruction of marketing theory. While acknowledging the use of the societal marketing concept in practice, this use is problematized with respect to a number of critical moral issues. In particular, the question of who should and can decide what is in the public’s best interests, and elucidate the moral deficiencies of the rational‐instrumental process upon which marketing decisions are frequently rationalised. Suggests that attention should be refocused away from prescribing what “moral” or “societal” marketing should be, and towards developing an understanding of the structures, meanings and discourses which shape and explain marketing and consumption decision making and sustain its positive and negative impacts on society.

Marketing and the Natural Environment: What Role for Morality?

This article explores the literature relating marketing to the natural environment from the point of view of morality. It argues that the issue of morality has not been developed in any comprehensive or cohesive way in this literature and subsequently seeks to provide an analysis of the different ways in which morality has, to date, been applied and used. Five different moral perspectives are identified—namely, fair play, managerialist, reformist, reconstructionist, and interpretist perspectives. These are categorized according to the main moral issues typically examined, the core discipline from which the perspective has been developed, the form of morality ordinarily referred to, and the prevalent subject of moral enquiry. The various approaches are examined and their contribution assessed. The relationship between the perspectives is addressed, and it is suggested that from a macromarketing point of view, the reconstructionist and the interpretist perspectives might be expected to be the most fruitful avenues for future investigation.

Public Responsibility and Private Enterprise in Developing Countries

In developing countries, firms encounter distinct challenges that place them in situations where they take on functions typically handled by the public sector. These functions range from the provision of health care and education for local communities to the development of political capacity and public policy. Drawing on 30 case studies of companies operating in developing regions of the world, this article presents a typology of four strategies that describe the different ways in which firms can engage in public responsibilities. For each strategy, it outlines the key challenges faced by firms along with suggestions for overcoming them. The burdens firms bear in providing services in response to public policy failures are substantial. Only by effectively developing an appropriate strategic orientation can programs be created that add value both to businesses and to the communities in which they operate.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Small-And Medium-Size Enterprises: Investigating Employee Engagement in Fair Trade Companies

Employee buy-in is a key factor in ensuring small- and medium-size enterprise (SME) engagement with corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this exploratory study, we use participant observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate the way in which three fair trade SMEs utilise human resource management (and selection and socialisation in particular) to create employee engagement in a strong triple bottomline philosophy, while simultaneously coping with resource and size constraints. The conclusions suggest that there is a strong desire for, but tradeoff within these companies between selection of individuals who already identify with the triple bottomline philosophy and individuals with experience and capability to deal with mainstream brand management – two critical employee attributes that appear to be rarely found together. The more important the business experience to the organisation, the more effort the organisation must expend in formalising their socialisation programmes to ensure employee engagement. A key method in doing this is increasing employee knowledge of, and affection for, the target beneficiaries of the CSR programme (increased moral intensity).