The Spirits of Corporate Social Responsibility : Senior Executive Perceptions of the Role of the Firm in Society in Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and the United States

We report our findings on cross-societal variations in values about CSR in senior executives from five economies. We find that executives in all five are concerned with the roles of their firms in society, with those in Japan most so and those in Hong Kong least so. However, executives in each context have different conceptualizations of how firms contribute to society. The data suggest variation along three dimensions: implicit vs. explicit CSR, stakeholder-oriented vs. production-oriented CSR within implicit CSR, and different main stakeholders within stakeholder-oriented CSR. We discuss the implications for future research on CSR and comparative business systems