A Systemic View of Corporate Social Responsibility in State-Owned Enterprises

José-Rodrigo Córdoba-Pachón, Raquel Garde-Sánchez (University of Granada), & Manuel-Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar (University of Granada)

This paper provides a practical approach to develop CSR (corporate social responsibility) oriented practices in a particular type of organisation: The state owned enterprise (SOE).  This type of organisation is very common in countries, though it is often regarded as a privatised company. The notion of the state is still very contentious, as is its role in regulating markets worldwide. The paper uses a sample of Spanish SOE and provides a synergy of ways to consider CSR (as an output or as a process). Using soft systems methodology (SSM), the paper suggests how issues relevant to CSR in SOE can be discerned and mapped in terms of human activity systems. The resulting maps (or conceptual models) of activity can then be used to guide debate among SOE managers and stakeholders. Our work contributes to current debates on how to make CSR more grounded in what companies do or could do. This means companies can use both ‘ideal’ CSR activities as well as those which would be related to their own activities and conceptions about work. The role of researchers and others facilitating CSR would be to synergise these types of activities with the help of easy to convey tools (in this case, systems maps).

Córdoba-Pachón, J-R., Garde-Sánchez, R., & Rodríguez-Bolívar, M-P. (2014). A Systemic View of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Knowledge and Process Management, 21(3). 10.1002/kpm.1453

Links: More information about the paper; Open access version (not yet available); published article