The path to good citizenship - Zadek, 2004

Zadek, S. 2004. The path to corporate responsibility, Harvard Business Review, 82 (December): 125-132.

Key issue: the evolution of corporation’s approach to CSR (organizational learning) and the path to issue maturity (societal learning).

The author identifies 5 steps of organizational learining:

• Defensive (deny practices, outcomes or responsibilities)
• Compliance (adopt a policy-based compliance appraoch as a cost of doing business)
• Managerial (embed societal issues in their core management processes)
• Strategic (integrate societal issues in their core business strategy)
• Civil (promote braod participation in CSR)

Societal learning: issue maturity model, developed by the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk:

• Latent
• Emerging
• Consolidating
• Institutionalised

Finally, the history of Nike approach to CSR is analysed, focusing on how the incentives based on cutting costs given to the purchasing department conflicted with the company’s labour standard code