Business Legitimacy and Corporate Social Responsibility in the Russian Context

Large and medium companies have failed to acquire legitimacy and respectability within the vast strata of the society in Russia. This resulting crisis of confidence may have serious consequences, including increasing intervention by the state. The study, which is based on the survey of 129 firms in Russia, seeks to establish, first, whether the attitude towards and understanding of CSR by Russian managers was similar to that of their western counterparts, and second, to find out if the conditions of low generalized trust would stimulate Russian firms to develop CSR as a means of increasing their legitimacy with the stakeholders as is suggested in literature. Our survey provides evidence of a discrepancy between attitudes predicted by theory and those revealed by managers. This leads us to consider a range of economic, social and political factors in the search for an explanation for the discrepancy