Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a topic of current interest due to a growing focus on sustainability and a changing role of business, where business is increasingly seen as playing an important part in solving environmental and social problems (Blowfield & Murray, 2011). This has given rise to the debate on what’s in it for business, the business case for CSR (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). Up till this date, researchers have not been able to show consistent, positive findings of the influence of CSR on financial measures (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001; Orlitzky, Schmidt, & Rynes, 2003), neither on systemic social changes. In addition, the business case can be highly dependent on industry and company size; large, branded manufacturers typically have more to gain on CSR than smaller service companies. Several studies promote CSR as an important driver for innovation (Nidumolu, Prahalad, & Rangaswami, 2009; Porter & Kramer, 2011), but most of these studies focus on innovation that takes place within companies; e.g. process innovations, organizational innovations and marketing innovations according to how these are systematized in the Oslo manual (OECD & Eurostat, 2005), not much is found in literature on CSR as a driver for product innovation. In addition, the existing studies on CSR as a driver for innovation are mainly on large and multinational companies, and the few studies on CSR-driven innovation in SMEs focus on describing practices and implementation. Therefore, there is a need for more research on how CSR can drive innovation and growth (Bos-Brouwers, 2010; MacGregor & Fontrodona, 2010; Mendibil, Hernandez, Espinach, Garriga, & Macgregor, 2007), especially seen from a larger system perspective. A literature review of accountability approaches (Skaar and Fet, 2011) identified two gaps concerning CSR in larger systems, hereunder upstream and downstream in the value chain of a product. The first gap is that there are no reporting approaches that combine social and environmental aspects in the value chain, and the second gap is that there are no reporting approaches that combine CSR-information from the product life cycle (processes) and with the CSR-information in the extended supply chain (organization).
The presentation will focus on how to address CSR performance of products, starting with identifying and measuring CSR-aspects and continuing with managing and communicating on these aspects to key stakeholder, hereunder both upstream and downstream value chain stakeholders. Further, it will highlight the need for a framework for measuring, aggregating, managing and communicating CSR performance on different system levels to achieve changes towards sustainable solutions illustrated by a few case examples from Norway. The first level addresses CSR-aspects connected to chemical use and human exposure in the production and use phase of products, the second the organizational efforts to reduce chemical exposure, and the third how CSR-aspects can be documented on the product level, e.g. by CSR-claims. Results from case-studies show that the current practice for identifying and measuring CSR performance in the value chain is lacking methods for aggregation and allocation, methods that should preferably be scientific and at least consensus based dependent on further development of social LCA (Skaar, 2013).
The presentation will give some concluding thoughts on how life cycle management, product declarations and social responsible product labeling can, or will, lead to changes towards sustainable social systems, and if these changes will have an impact on the CSR-concept and its operation in the value change or on CSR supply chain management by companies.
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