Can the differences in senior leadership team & society’s orientations impact on CSR implementation in MNCs? A case study

In recent years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have been facing challenges in implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes that meet the needs of diverse stakeholder groups. These arise as the implementation is often led by senior leadership teams whose orientations lack cultural sensitivity and local relevance. Hence, this study reviewed the extent to which a corporation’s senior leadership team are responding to these challenges. In exploring the issues in question, constructivist realism position encompassing quantitative and qualitative methodologies was adopted as they both apply similar logic when analysing phenomena. They are also deconstructive in probing natural unfolding episodes in the social world since both methodologies deal with data. Analysis of findings revealed differences in senior leadership team of the corporation and that of stakeholders’ orientations. In addition, stakeholder groups believed that corporations’ obligations to society are not limited to economic and legal, but include social, environmental, and philanthropic. Finally, corporations that operate in environments where legal and corporate governance rules are weak, may ignore obligations that are beyond economic and legal. Based on these outcomes, the study made the following contributions: corporations should develop a robust framework that facilitates dialogue among stakeholders and the host country must tighten its corporate governance and rules of law to make corporations adhere to cultural sensitivity and local relevance when implementing social and ethical programmes.