Stakeholder Mapping of CSR in Switzerland

Abstract

PURPOSE: Previous research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Europe has made few attempts to identify stakeholders and their contribution to this topic. Using stakeholder map methodology, showing power, urgency, legitimacy, and concerns of different actors, the paper investigates the current state of CSR in Switzerland.

METHODOLOGY: To derive this map, publicly available documents were explored, augmented by 27 interviews with key stakeholders (consumers, media, government, trade unions, Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs), banks, certifiers, and consultants) and management of different companies (Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), and large national companies). Using MAXQDA, the quantified codes given for power, legitimacy, and urgency were triangulated between self-reporting, external assessments, and statements from publicly available documents and subsequently transferred into stakeholder priorities or, in other words, into positions in the map. Further, the codes given in the interviews for different CSR interests and the results from the document analysis were linked between stakeholders. The identified concerns and priorities were quantitatively analysed in regard to centrality and salience using VennMaker.

FINDINGS: The paper identified SMEs, MNEs, and cooperating NPOs as being the most significant stakeholders, in that order. CSR is therefore not driven primarily by regulators, market pressure, or customers.

Further network parameters substantiated the importance of SMEs while following an unconventionally informal and idiosyncratic CSR approach. Hence, insights into these ethics-driven, unformalised business models that pursue broader responsibility based on trust, traditional values, regional anchors, and the willingness to “give something back” were formed. Examples of this strong CSR habit include democratic decisions and abolished hierarchies, handshake instead of formal contracts, and transparency in all respects (e.g. performance indicators, salaries, and bonuses).

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The research found an innovative, vibrant, and practical CSR model that is emerging for reasons alter than conventional CSR agendas are supposed to evolve. In fact, the stakeholder map and the CSR practices may point at a very different role businesses have adopted in Switzerland. Such models offer a useful, heuristic evaluation of the contribution of formal management systems (e.g. as could be found in MNEs) in comparison to the unformalised SME business conduct.

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS: 27 interviews as primary data that supplements publicly available documents are clearly only indicative.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE: A rarely reported and astonishing feature of many of the very radical SME practices is that their link to commercial strategies was in most cases not seen. However, SMEs are neither the “poor relative” nor the abridged version of CSR, but are manifesting CSR as a Swiss set of values that fits the societal culture and the visionary goals of SMEs’ owners/managers and governs how a sustainably responsible company should behave. Hence, as a new stance and argument within CSR related research, this paper concludes that “informal” does not mean “weak”.

This paper covers a myriad of management fields, e.g. CSR as strategic tool in business ethics, stakeholder and network management, decision making, further theoretical frameworks, such as transaction cost and social capital theory. In other words, this research closes scientific gaps by at once applying quantitative as well as qualitative methods and by merging for the first time network methodology with CSR and stakeholder research.

Note: ACKNOWLEDGMENT: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Corporate Responsibility Research Conference 2014, University of Leeds.

Keywords: CSR, Stakeholder Analysis, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Switzerland

JEL Classification: M13, M14