Mette Zølner

Corporate Social Responsibility in Mexico and France Exploring the Role of Normative Institutions

Scholarship on corporate social responsibility (CSR) shows both that the concept itself is interpreted in a multitude of different ways and that significant cross-cultural differences exist in the way that business approaches the question of social responsibility and ethics. Little comparative work, however, has yet been carried out that investigates the reasons behind such differences. The authors analyze the cases of Mexico and France by drawing on Enderle’s practical, semantic, and theoretical dimensions of business ethics. The authors further integrate the concept of “normative institutions” to explore attitudes toward CSR and assess the likely future adoption of CSR practices in each country. The article concludes that despite similar institutional conditions in Mexico and France, the interplay of those institutions combined with the historical role of business and its relationship with society produces quite different articulations of CSR in each country. The article highlights the need for further studies that explore how institutions enable and constrain business’ articulation of social responsibility.

Recontextualization of the Corporate Values of a Danish MNC in a Subsidiary in Bangalore

The authors analyze the recontextualization of the corporate values of a multinational company (MNC) in one of its subsidiaries. The authors draw upon qualitative material from a case study of a company of Danish origin and its endeavors to implement its corporate values in an Indian subsidiary in Bangalore. The authors show how these values take on new meanings when interpreted by local employees. On the one hand, their understandings are shaped by the prevailing meaning system, including leadership ideals, and on the other hand, by their resources and strategies. To further their understanding of the recontextualization, the authors point to a need to go beyond the system of signification shared within a national culture and include social agency, of which they conceive in Bourdieusian terms.

Methods for Network Governance Research: an Introduction

This book discusses the reflections about and choices of methodology in a research project on network governance completed in 2005.1 It is a challenging task to discuss how a research process evolves and how decisions about research methods are made. Although the process is crucial for research results, it mostly remains an untold story. This is the case both within the social sciences in general and in network governance research in particular. When reporting their results obtained from empirical research, researchers often cover methodological issues only briefly in introductions, in footnotes or in technical appendices. Mostly, the purpose is to justify the value of the findings in terms of reliability, validity or representativity. More in-depth discussions are mostly reserved for the overwhelming and thorough literature on methodology in which the focus is on how research processes should ideally be and on how to apply specific research methods in general.

Short-term International Assignments

Multinational companies (MNCs) face an increasing need for leaders with international job experience, openness towards people with other cultural backgrounds and receptiveness to other ways of doing business within the organization. Traditionally, such cross-cultural skills and abilities are acquired during long-term expatriation and nurtured through training and mentoring. However, long-term assignments are expensive for companies (Stahl & Bjorkman, 2006, pp. 167–168) and strenuous for many employees. The HR manager’s remarks above raise a relevant question as to whether cultural sensitivity can be nurtured through a number of shorter stays in several regions, in particular because many international assignees have had internships abroad or studied at foreign universities and thus are expected to have quite a different take on working in multicultural business contexts than their parents’ generation.

Being a 'modern Indian' in an offshore centre in Bangalore: cross-cultural contextualisation of organisational identification

This article explores how the socio-cultural contexts of a subsidiary shape the organisational identification articulated by its local employees (HCNs). This is relevant as companies globalise with greater socio-cultural distances between organisational units and their employees as a consequence. The analysis is based upon the study of an off-shore service centre in Bangalore that performs financial services for an MNC headquartered in Denmark. The identification with the MNC and its corporate culture expressed by local employees is conveyed as being connected to external self-enhancement (belonging to an esteemed organisation) as well as internal self-enhancement (feeling important within the organisation). The corporate culture is made sense of in the local Indian context and shaped by their particular characteristics as members of Bangalore’s international workforce. We argue that understanding and enhancing organisational identification requires careful consideration of the socio-cultural contexts as well as backgrounds of individuals and professional groups.

Dilemmas of Expatriate Managers

[All of our local team leaders] can recite, without hesitating, what our company expects from a manager […] However, as my culture coach tells me, they don’t have our values under the skin. They are ambivalent when it comes to managing their own people.

Reception and Recontextualization of Corporate Values in Subsidiaries

There is widespread belief that a globally shared set of corporate values is a viable managerial tool and a unifying force in a multinational company (MNC) (Welch & Welch, 2006). Therefore, many MNCs consider the transfer of such values to be crucially important when they buy or establish subsidiaries outside their country of origin. For the tool to be efficient, however, the corporate values must not only be transferred to the subsidiary, but also be well received and internalized by local managers and employees. This is a complex process, and literature is inconclusive as to how to ascertain whether values that have proved successful in one context will thrive in another. Some researchers suggest that previous international experience makes the transfer of immaterial assets (values, thought patterns and practices) easier for the company (e.g., Delios & Beamish, 2001), and that ‘cultural proximity’ increases the chances of success (e.g., Kostova, 1999; Kostova & Roth, 2002). However, Brannen (2004) uses the example of the Walt Disney Company’s success in Japan and initial failure in France to illustrate that neither cultural proximity nor international experience guarantee a smooth transfer of immaterial assets. Therefore, although there is some research on attempts by MNCs to transfer immaterial assets such as corporate values to different host-country environments, we do not yet have a full understanding of the process.

Young Business Leaders in France: Governance through Values and Ideas

The present chapter goes into the formation and the functioning of a governance network that consists of business leaders in charge of private companies of all sizes and within all sectors all over France. This governance network originates from a particular business association: the Centre des jeunes dirigeants de l’entreprise (CJD), in the sense that the network actors all are present or former members of this association. Since 1938, the CJD has gathered young business leaders that, in the words of its founders, work to put the economy at the service of mankind. Accordingly, the role of a company is not limited to creating value for the good of its owner, it also has a societal responsibility. On the basis of this value, the CJD elaborates, exchanges and experiments with ideas about how to organise society and, in particular, about the role of business within it. The CJD’s declared aim is to achieve influence. To do so, it encourages and empowers its members to be actively involved in a large variety of bodies within the French polity at national and local levels where such societal interests are debated and decisions are being made and implemented (CJD 2004).