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Organizational design for embedding corporate social responsibility

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Organizational design for embedding corporate social responsibility

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Organizational Design for Embedding Corporate Social Responsibility
by
Christopher Grivas

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

December 2022

Ó Copyright by Christopher Grivas 2022
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Christopher Grivas certifies the approval of the Dissertation
Eric Canny
Kathy Stowe
Courtney Malloy, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022

iv
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the evolution of the organizational design of
companies that have successfully embedded corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their
business, identify lessons learned from their experiences, and then make recommendations for
how other organizations can make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. The research was
conducted within organizations whose established CSR ethos is recognized as being both
impactful to society and good for business. The study’s main research question, “What lessons
learned can be derived from socially responsible organizations for embedding CSR into the
fabric of their business?” was examined by employing a qualitative research methodology. The
qualitative approach enabled the capturing and analyzing of these businesses’ experiences
detailing how the design of their organizations evolved over time to embed CSR principles in
daily processes. This study employed the Star Model (Galbraith, 1977) of organizational design
as its conceptual framework, which provided a context for 10 key findings to emerge.
Recommendations were then presented for companies beginning to adopt CSR as their strategic
operating model.
Keywords: climate change, sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, organizational design,
corporate social responsibility.

v
Acknowledgments
The community of support I found along my journey toward a doctorate made the
experience so much more fun and meaningful than I had expected. Thank you, Cohort 16
Saturday Breakfast Club! You all are awesome. Thank you to everyone who agreed to be
interviewed for this research, as it was your time and experiences that made this work
meaningful. Thank you to my dissertation chair, Dr. Courtney Malloy, and my dissertation
committee, Dr. Eric Canny and Dr. Kathy Stowe, for your encouragement, guidance, and
expertise. Thank you to my colleagues at Boeing for your endorsement and support throughout
this process. Most of all, thank you to Erica Browne Grivas for riding along with me and always
believing we would get here. Fight on!

vi
Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... v
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ viii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. ix
Chapter One: Overview of the Study .............................................................................................. 1
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................. 3
Purpose of the Project and Research Question .................................................................... 6
Significance of the Study ..................................................................................................... 6
Overview of Theoretical Framework and Methodology ..................................................... 7
Definitions ........................................................................................................................... 9
Organization of the Study .................................................................................................... 9
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ......................................................................................... 11
History of Corporations and Social Corporate Responsibility .......................................... 11
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 31
Summary ............................................................................................................................ 33
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 34
Research Question ............................................................................................................. 34
Overview of Design ........................................................................................................... 34
The Researcher .................................................................................................................. 35
Data Sources: Site and Participant Selection ..................................................................... 35
Data Collection .................................................................................................................. 37
Instrumentation .................................................................................................................. 38
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 38
Credibility and Trustworthiness ........................................................................................ 39

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Ethics ................................................................................................................................. 40
Summary ............................................................................................................................ 40
Chapter Four: Findings .................................................................................................................. 42
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 42
Findings ............................................................................................................................. 44
Summary ............................................................................................................................ 71
Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations ......................................................................... 73
Discussion of Findings ...................................................................................................... 73
Recommendations ............................................................................................................. 77
Limitations and Delimitations ........................................................................................... 84
Recommendations for Future Research ............................................................................. 85
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 86
References ..................................................................................................................................... 88
Appendix A: Interview Protocol ................................................................................................... 98

viii
List of Tables
Table 1: Study Participants 43
Table 2: Overview of Findings Related to the Star Model for Organizational Design 45
Table 3: Additional Lessons Learned 46

ix
List of Figures
Figure 1: Carroll’s Pyramid Model of CSR 13
Figure 2: Galbraith’s Star Model 22
Figure 3: Kotter’s 8-Stage Change Process 28
Figure 4: Galbraith’s Star Model With a Focus on Elements of CSR 32

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Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Economists and social scientists agree that to tackle some of the biggest problems facing
humanity, such as climate change and social inequity, there needs to be private as well as public
commitment and action (Henderson, 2020). Society itself has increasingly placed strong
expectations on corporations to behave in socially responsible ways (Latapí Agudelo et al.,
2019), and corporations have been feeling that pressure. Responses to social demand include
recent developments in corporate functions such as corporations producing annual sustainability
reports as a common practice (Business Wire, 2019); the inclusion of environment, social, and
governance (ESG) ratings on stock analysis spreadsheets (Ahmed et al., 2021); and the
prevalence of roles within corporations dedicated to aspects of corporate social responsibility
(CSR) such as diversity and inclusion executives, chief sustainability officers, and chief purpose
officers. The demonstration of an organization’s commitment to CSR principles is now being
used as an essential tool for recruitment (Jones et al., 2016), public relations (Ozdora Aksak et
al., 2016), and increasing shareholder investment (Zhou & Cui, 2019). The embedding of CSR
principles into the workings of a business has also proven to be good for its profitability (Atif,
2019).
Alternatively, the dangers of a company acting in a socially irresponsible way can
be damaging to not just that company, but the company’s entire ecosystem. In 2015, Volkswagen
was involved in a crippling scandal when it was discovered they had intentionally installed a
device on their diesel vehicles that circumvented emission regulations. These devices enabled
these cars to pollute over 40 times more than allowed (Ewing, 2017). At the same time,
Volkswagen was not only covering up their environmentally unsound practices by also
presenting these cars as using clean diesel technology. This practice of claiming to be
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environmentally sustainable but not doing so is a marketing strategy called greenwashing
(Edwards, 2022). The combination of Volkswagen’s greenwashing and its overtly damaging
actions toward the environment produced catastrophic results. According to Barth et al. (2021),
Volkswagen suffered an initial operational loss of 8.45%, but “studying the economic effects in
more detail, we show that Volkswagen’s total losses of 27.4 billion euros in terms of changes in
equity market values over the first [5] event days are almost entirely composed of abnormal
losses” (p. 37). Barth et al. (2021) added that suppliers overall suffered 18.3 billion euros of
abnormal losses during this time, with 60% of the firms exhibiting negative changes, especially
European suppliers connected to Volkswagen.
Greenwashing has led to increased distrust of corporations in our society and a pervasive
belief that business is incapable of self-regulation (Osman, 2020). Additionally, the practice of
greenwashing has negative effects on the broader business ecosystem of the company found to
be inauthentic about its sustainability efforts (Wang et al., 2020). With the consequences of
corporate irresponsibility so devastating and all the benefits to society and businesses themselves
of CSR so clear, more and more companies are authentically rededicating themselves by
embracing CSR as an underlying practice (Kuisma, 2017).
Yet, there is a lack of consensus on the best ways to adopt CSR principles into existing
businesses which results in a potential decrease in impact on society and lessens the benefits to
the company itself. (Rangan et al., 2015). At the same time, research shows that organizational
design impacts the success of corporate sustainability and financial performance (Epstein &
Buhovac, 2014). The present study examined well-established CSR/ESG programs in order to
identify lessons learned that can be shared broadly with stakeholders seeking to develop
successful initiatives in their organizations.
3

Background of the Problem
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the idea that businesses have an obligation to
enhance and benefit the society in which they operate (Chaffee, 2017). The societal pull for
organizations to engage in the work of their business in a socially responsible manner has been
steadily growing since the Great Depression (Latapí Agudelo et al., 2019). Often, the increased
focus on CSR by society was the result of something going on in the society itself, whether that
was a social change, such as women entering the workforce in the 1940s, or an environmental
one, such as the need for bringing pollution under control 1970s. Today’s challenges, specifically
climate change and social inequity, are fueling an increased focus on corporations’ role in
creating and/or exacerbating these issues and the expectation that corporations are now obligated
to participate in fixing these problems (Henderson, 2020).
Corporations that are guided by a socially responsible ethic, must look at all aspects of
their business to honestly assess how well they are meeting their obligations (Serafeim, 2020). A
guiding set of principles that corporations are being measured on related to CSR are commonly
grouped in the categories of ESG (de la Gorce et al., 2022). Measurement and reporting of ESG
factors are a ubiquitous practice companies use to demonstrate their commitment to CSR
(Ahmed et al., 2021).
Environment assesses how well the organization fulfills its obligation to protect and
sustain the environment as it conducts its business. Specific issues assessed in each of these
categories are complex and far-reaching. Environmental factors would include issues such as
whether products are manufactured and distributed in environmentally friendly ways, for
example. Are materials throughout the business’s supply chain also provided in a similar
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environmentally sustainable way? How well is waste dealt with in the manufacturing and
delivery of the products?
Social is how the business treats its employees and customers alike. Social factors include
issues related to how well the company promotes and values diversity within its workforce and
customer base. Another factor includes human rights issues such as how well a company’s
products and services treat the customer. Do their products enhance or damage the customer’s
life? This can be a difficult question to answer as many products ultimately do both. An opioid,
for example, can alleviate pain and can also create addiction. Social media can connect people
who have been separated by time and/or distance and yet can also be a means of spreading
misinformation.
Governance refers to how transparent the business is in how it reports its progress and
decision-making with its investors and stakeholders. Governance factors are about how well the
organization holds itself accountable (Serafeim, 2020). Factors include overall transparency of
decision-making, equity in compensation management as well as fair employee relations. Often a
company’s governance is assessed on how they treat their employees in terms of compensation,
benefits, work schedule, workplace safety, and fair and equitable performance appraisal. Lastly,
governance also addresses how the company invests in society itself in terms of philanthropy,
volunteerism, and providing goods and services to non-profit organizations.
CSR has recently taken a much more prominent role in the climate of global business
(Latapí Agudelo et al., 2019). In 2019, 90% of the largest 500 companies by market cap in the
Russell 1000 Index published sustainability reports (Business Wire, 2019). Most stock reports
contain an ESG rating to guide investors and investors are increasingly making decisions based
on how well an organization performs regarding these metrics (Ahmed et al., 2021). While this
5

study was being conducted, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) strengthened
its standards for ESG reporting by proposing new climate disclosure requirements for companies
listed in the United States (de la Gorce et al., 2022)
Customers, like investors, are also increasingly making decisions about where they spend
their money based on the CSR behaviors of an organization (Chernev & Blair, 2015). According
to AFLAC’s (2020) CSR survey, 77% of customers in a survey of over 800 people say they
“would be motivated to purchase products or services if the company shows they are committed
to making the world a better place.” The same survey found that 73% of investors say a
“company’s efforts to help improve society and the environment contribute positively to return
on investments.”
Interestingly, the link between CSR and profitability is consistently demonstrated in
business results (Edmans, 2012; Romi et al., 2018). Those businesses with a commitment to CSR
consistently had increased profitability over those who have yet to embrace CSR as a part of
their business practices. This bottom-line result demonstrates that CSR is good for both society
and the business itself (Chernev & Blair, 2015).
The problem of practice is that CSR efforts are often not embedded effectively into
organizations in ways that allow them to be most impactful (Rangan et al., 2015). Too often
these efforts within the same organization can be working cross-purposes, be uncoordinated, and
thus be less effective than intended. While it is recognized that the organizational design of one
organization may not be effectively transferred to another (Galbraith, 1977), there is a benefit in
capturing and examining the experience of designing successful socially responsible
organizations (Smith, 2020). While the design itself may be different, the experience these
companies had in setting up their organizations for success may be worthwhile for others. The
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goal of the present study is to identify promising practices for designing socially responsible
organizations from the experience of organizations that have already successfully navigated this
journey.
Purpose of the Project and Research Question
The purpose of the present study was to examine the evolution of the organizational
design of companies that have successfully embedded CSR into their business, identify lessons
learned from their experiences, and then make recommendations for how other organizations can
make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. The research was conducted within
organizations whose established CSR ethos is recognized as being both impactful to society and
good for business. Stories detailing how these businesses evolved and designed their
organizations to embed CSR principles in daily processes were captured and analyzed to explore
the present study’s main research question: What lessons learned can be derived from socially
responsible organizations for embedding CSR into the fabric of their business?
Significance of the Study
Throughout the last century, businesses have had to adjust business practices to the social
needs of the time (Beets, 2011). The time of the present study is no different. What has changed
is, as of this writing, the climate of the marketplace has changed to hold organizations
accountable to behave in a socially responsible manner. Today’s social issues, such as climate
change and social justice, in particular, are both pressing (Dodson et al., 2020) and more at the
forefront of the minds of people in the current workforce (Dhingra et al., 2021). Corporate
leaders and shareholders have recently been expressing the belief that businesses are obligated to
society to take responsibility for the business’ role in these societal challenges (Zhou, & Cui,
2019) and then work toward mitigating any damage done. Businesses risk creating or deepening
7

problems in terms of negative public perception, difficulty recruiting top talent, reduction in
shareholder investment, and ultimately loss of standing in the marketplace (Stordalen et al.,
2013) if CSR is not seen by the public as central to the business’s core values and purpose.
By identifying best practices in the organizational design of organizations driven by CSR,
businesses with less mature CSR efforts can be better set up for success. Given the increasing
expectation of society that businesses must behave in a socially responsible manner (Stordalen et
al., 2013), learning from the experience of others on the same journey is essential. The present
study seeks to enable that learning by capturing and examining these experiences and then
drawing recommendations to embed social responsibility more easily into the design of an
organization.
Overview of Theoretical Framework and Methodology
Organizational design is a key component in organizational change models (Burke &
Litwin, 1992) and has long been recognized as a key contributor to how people behave within an
organization. Introduced by Galbraith (1977), the Star Model is one of the most recognized
organizational design models in existence. Since the model’s introduction, it has been used and
refined (Martins & Coetzee, 2009), enabling organizations to align business practices to strategy,
clarify roles and interdependencies, and create the framework needed for the people in
organizations to fulfill their purposes. The Star Model was chosen as the theoretical framework
for the present study as it is a proven, practical guide for understanding the interrelationships of
critical components of organization design and specifications for designing organizations to
promote environmental sustainability (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014).
The model consists of five key components presented as points on a five-pointed star
(Galbraith, 1977); the five key components are organizational strategy, structure, processes,
8

people, and rewards. Organizational strategy is a statement of the business’s main purpose: the
value the business brings to customers. Organizational Structure is the basic layout of important
functions and roles in the organization. Processes are how the organization does its work: how
the components of the structure work together to accomplish the organization’s goals. The
people component is about identifying the needed skills and competencies people in the
organization will need to do the work, as well as how these people are managed and developed.
The rewards component captures key performance indicators, motivating metrics, and measures
of health and success of the organization as strategies are put into action.
The Star Model’s efficacy has been confirmed by studies numerous times (Kesler &
Kates, 2010; Mohrman & Lawler, 2014) and has been endorsed by the Boston College Center for
Corporate Citizenship (Smith, 2020) as being particularly useful for CSR. Mohrman and Lawler
(2014) found the model served well to align the interconnectivity and dynamic nature of the five
components of the model for embedding sustainability, a key CSR ingredient, into an
organization. For a business to successfully achieve the goals of impactful CSR, CSR principles
and practices need to be woven into the organization itself (Kesler & Kates, 2010; Mohrman &
Lawler, 2014) and the Star Model provides a useful way of thinking about how that might be
done.
The present study is qualitative research (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) designed to capture
and explore lessons learned for embedding CSR into the organizational design of businesses.
Interviews were conducted with eight experienced participants, including CSR directors, the
organization’s board members, and corporate sustainability officers. The descriptive results were
then analyzed and summarized to provide answers to the research questions of the present study.
9

Definitions
● Corporations: As Chaffee (2017) pointed out, corporations are products of the
government; organizations that exist through legal empowerment to enable a group of
individuals to come together “in the creation and operation of the business entity”
(pp. 356–357).
● Corporate social responsibility: A corporation should behave in a socially
responsible way because it is dependent on the representative government that created
the conditions for the corporation to exist (Chaffee, 2017). The corporation is
therefore beholden to the people it profits from. Corporate social responsibility efforts
focus on a corporation’s accountability to society.
● Climate change: Climate change is the changing of the Earth’s climate due to the
actions of mankind, which is a global existential threat and a major public health
issue (Patz et al., 2014).
● Organizational design: Per Galbraith (1977),
Organizational design is conceived to be a decision process to bring about
coherence between the goals or purposes for which the organization exists, the
patterns of division of labor and inter-unit coordination, and the people who
will do the work. (p. 5)
Organization of the Study
Chapter One provided an overview of the focus of the study and its importance to the
practice of designing organizations for successful CSR. Chapter Two presents a review of the
literature so that the reader can see how the present study fits into the body of collective
knowledge that currently exists. Chapter Three presents the research methodology. Chapter Four
10

presents the results from the study and an analysis of how the data answers the research
questions. Chapter Five provides discussion of the findings, recommendations, and s and
thoughts about how future research can continue to improve the governance and implementation
of CSR within businesses.

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Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
The present chapter provides a review of the literature related to the origins and current
state of CSR in businesses and provides an overview of organizational design theory and
practices. The purpose is to orient the reader to the key components of the current study and
place the present research into an appropriate context. In the first section, an overview of the
history of corporations and CSR is presented which includes an overview of key literature related
to CSR’s development and the shareholder vs. stakeholder perspectives on CSR. The following
section introduces organizational design, the importance of organizational design to CSR, and
the theoretical framework of Galbraith’s (1977) 5-Star Model of Organizational Design.
History of Corporations and Social Corporate Responsibility
A corporation is “a business entity whose form is defined by the government” (Beets,
2011, p. 193). As Chief Justice John Marshall said, “A corporation is an artificial being,
invisible, intangible and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it
possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it” (Colombo,
2008, p. 252).
Chaffee (2017) argued that because the United States is a representative government and
obligated to act in the best interests of its people, then corporations also share the same
obligation as corporate existence is granted by the same government. Given the purpose of a
corporation is to provide a service or goods in such a manner that the business makes a profit for
shareholders, the way that service or good is provided (as well as the service or good itself)
should be done in a way that does not harm, but rather helps the society in which the corporation
exists. Therefore, CSR is a business model where the business makes a focused effort to operate
12

in ways that benefit, rather than detract from society and the environment, while still turning a
profit for shareholders.
While corporations have been around for centuries, the idea that CSR is a definable
construct began in the mid-Great Depression era of the 1930s (Beets, 2011). Given those difficult
times of scarcity, it seems like a natural line of reasoning to wonder where help for communities
can come from – public vs. private entities. It was not until Bowen (1953), however, that a
proper definition of CSR was formed. He explained that a business executive’s social
responsibility was to make decisions that were in harmony with the values of society.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the concept of CSR was explored both in academia and
politics (Beets, 2011). In 1971, the Committee for Economic Development of the USA put forth
the idea that implicit in the nature of corporations was a social contract with society; as the world
continued to evolve and grow, broader social responsibilities would fall on the private sector.
Just as the Great Depression influenced the discussion of corporate responsibility at the time, the
social and political concerns of the 1970s, with hot topics of the day such as how to manage
pollution or human and labor rights, brought CSR into the spotlight as an important factor for
positive change. As a result, CSR as a concept had great appeal, though there was yet to be a
unified and clear definition.
The first unified definition of CSR came from Dr. Archie B. Carroll (1979) who said,
“The social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and
discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time” (Carroll,
1979, p. 500). Before this definition, CSR often seemed misaligned with the fundamental
business goal of making money. With Carroll’s definition, social responsibility is seen as an
integral part of the business itself.
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In 1991, the same Dr. Carroll introduced the pyramid model of CSR which sought to
represent the interaction of what he identified as four key CSR behaviors and society’s
expectations of business: economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. Carroll’s model (1991)
introduced the idea of corporate citizenship, which grounds companies as being a part of our
social community rather than somehow separate from it. Efforts to be solid corporate citizens
refer to positive actions corporations can take in terms of social responsibility. Carroll’s pyramid
model is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1
Carroll’s Pyramid Model of CSR

Note. Adapted from “The Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: Toward the Moral
Management of Organizational Stakeholders” by A. B. Carroll, 1991, Business Horizons, 34(4),
39–48. (https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(91)90005-G)
14

Shareholder Versus Stakeholder Perspectives on CSR
As stated above, before Carroll’s work (1979, 1991) CSR was often considered
something separate from the fundamental role of business – to make money. The two schools of
thought related to a business’ social responsibility were characterized by shareholder and
stakeholder perspectives. This section explores both perspectives to show how they have evolved
and contributed to the current understanding of CSR’s place in the business.
The Shareholder Perspective on CSR
Renowned economist Friedman (1970) advocated for the shareholder perspective, which
argues that the sole function of business is simply to make a profit for shareholders; beyond such
profit creation, a business has no other obligation. Shareholders having taken the profit, can then
use that money to benefit the social good as they see fit. Additionally, the shareholder
perspective acknowledges that the business must also function within parameters and regulations
imposed by the state but has no other inherent social responsibility.
The Stakeholder Perspective on CSR
The stakeholder perspective (McWilliams et al., 2006) also sees making a profit as an
outcome of business success, but not as an end in and of itself. The stakeholder perspective sees
a business’ purpose as creating something of value to a customer. That thing of value, whether a
good or service, improves the life of the stakeholders in some way. Stakeholders of the business
include both immediate and secondary entities (Freeman, 2010). Immediate stakeholders might
include the customer, the employees of the business, suppliers, the community the business
exists within, and shareholders, among others. Secondary stakeholders might be the government,
the industry the business is in, downstream suppliers, and the broader business community.
15

Knowledge of a company’s stakeholders informs how companies direct their investment
in the social good. CSR investments have taken many forms over time since the first
corporations were organized (McWilliams et al., 2006). Some CSR efforts have focused first on
internal stakeholders by tackling things like employee well-being, creating a talent pool for
recruitment by investing in education, creating tuition assistance programs, and providing a
living wage and health insurance among others (Cohen, 2010). External stakeholders have
benefited from CSR initiatives through philanthropic investment, community volunteering by
staff, and environmentally responsible manufacturing developments, among others (Urip, 2010).
The Benefits of the Holistic Stakeholder Approach
Researchers who have studied CSR (Chaffee, 2017; Chernev & Blair, 2015; Cohen,
2010; Freeman, 2010) have found that the stakeholder perspective is more holistic in that it not
only helps society at large but also enables the organization to produce more profits for
shareholders. One study (Edmans, 2012) found that companies with strong CSR initiatives
outperformed competitors by 2–3% over 25 years. Another (Romi et al., 2018) confirmed this by
finding through examining B-corps, which are for-profit entities that are certified by the
independent, non-profit organization B Lab, that business practices meet a threshold of CSR
standards. Romi et al. (2018) found that B-corps that were recognized as treating employees
exceptionally well also saw significantly higher employee productivity and sales growth as
compared to industry peers outside of the B-corp designation.
Beyond B-corps, the focus of businesses on how to operationalize CSR principles into
strategic organizational activities and how to weave CSR principles into the fabric of
corporations has been gaining increased attention over the past couple of decades. Governments
around the world have adopted regulations to hold corporations accountable to society (Latapí
16

Agudelo et al., 2019), thus enforcing societal expectations of the corporate-societal social
contract Carroll’s (1991) pyramid reflects. The United Nations has led many efforts like the
Kyoto Protocol of 1997 or the Paris Agreement on Sustainability, to align regulations on a global
scale related to common needs shared by humankind (Latapí Agudelo et al., 2019). These
regulations reinforce the social contract between corporations and society and demonstrate the
stakeholder approach in action.
The Societal Expectation of Corporate Social Responsibility Is Increasing
Since Carroll’s (1991) pyramid of CSR captured societal expectations of corporations,
those expectations have continued to grow. As an example of the growing attention paid to CSR,
at the time of Carroll’s publication there were only 23 articles found in the SCOPUS database
containing over 35,000 peer-reviewed journals that specifically contained all of the words
“corporate,” “social,” and “responsibility.” For 2020 alone, over 2675 publications contained all
three words (Kuzior et al., 2021).
By 2005, Werther and Chandler identified a shift in perception of CSR from a company
needing at least a minimum commitment to CSR to seeing CSR as a strategic necessity. In 2011,
Porter and Kramer argued that the fundamental purpose of a corporation must be redefined as
creating shared value, rather than simply turning a profit. Most recently, the idea that the main
objective of strategic CSR is to create sustainable value for society (Chandler, 2016) is a great
example of the continual evolution of society’s expectations of the business.
Wickert and Risi (2019) noted that CSR has “entered the boardroom and become a
mainstream management concept for businesses to address their ethical, social, and
environmental responsibilities toward society” (p. 1). Just since 2015, the advent of ESG ratings
of business has become more and more prevalent (Helm, 2022). During the period where data
17

was being gathered for this study, the SEC issued a change in their reporting requiring
companies to report on their ESG progress (de la Gorce et al., 2022) as part of their financial
statements.
The Emergence of ESG as a Form of Accountability
The term “ESG” first appeared in the United Nations Global Compact (2004) report, Who
Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World, where guidelines were
recommended on “how to better integrate environmental, social and corporate governance
issues” into financial reporting (Eccles et al., 2020). This was one of several reports contributing
to a set of UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, which launched in 2006 and
currently has financial institution signatories with over $89 trillion in assets. “The growth in the
number of signatories is a barometer of the growing awareness of ESG issues among investors
and their inclusion in investment decisions” (Eccles et al., 2020, p. 577).
The use of ESG reporting as a means of corporate accountability is still evolving and in
recent years has been getting a lot of traction. ESG ratings are currently a part of all SEC
reporting requirements (Helm, 2022). In 2021, the SEC made began requiring Nasdaq-listed
companies to disclose diversity statistics for their boards (Rives, 2022). The challenge has been
that reporting on these metrics has been inconsistent. Rives (2022) reports “There is little
consistency today in how companies define, much less report, corporate ESG or sustainability
results” (p. 1). Still, Rives also reported enough has been put in place for the SEC to identify
false claims or instances of greenlighting by corporations and fine such firms.
With the SEC’s efforts, accountability toward responsible and authentic ESG reporting is
underway in the United States and they are not alone. The European Union (EU) also has
regulatory requirements for reporting ESG metrics (Faccia et al., 2021) as part of financial
18

statements for corporations. Recently, the EU announced the Green Taxonomy in 2021, which
Hugo Dubourg or JP Morgan described,
The EU Taxonomy is a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally
sustainable economic activities. It is meant to be an enabler to scale up sustainable
investment and implement the Green Deal. Among other things, it is expected to create
security for investors, protect private investors from greenwashing, help companies plan
the transition, mitigate market fragmentation and eventually help shift investments where
they are most needed. (Dubourg, 2021, p. 1)
The Importance of Organizational Design to CSR
Organizational design is a method for organizing how work gets done within an
organization. The organizational design process addresses desired business outcomes, identifies
accountability relationships, examines necessary processes and related dependent relationships,
and creates an organizational structure intentionally built to achieve maximum business success
with as much ease and efficiency as possible (Galbraith, 1973, 1977; Kesler & Kates, 2010). It is
generally accepted that an organization cannot achieve strategic priorities if the business is not
designed in a manner that enables success (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014).
Every organization has an increasing interest related to social responsibility through
increased societal expectations (Chandler, 2016). Alignment of the organizational design to
support overall CSR strategy has been found essential to embed efforts, such as sustainability
issues, into the functionality of the business (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Serafeim, 2020).
Without organizational design providing alignment of the CSR ethic across an organization’s
processes, the overall impact of the CSR initiative is limited (Serafeim, 2020). As Rangan et al.
19

(2015) stated, “To maximize their positive impact on the social and environmental systems in
which they operate, companies must develop coherent CSR strategies” (p. 43).
As CSR was increasingly woven into the fabric of businesses worldwide regarding
creating sustainable business practices (Mohrman & Shani, 2011), specific roles have been
emerging within organizations that may serve cross-purposes, the same purpose, or may simply
benefit from increased alignment. Those roles include Chief Sustainability Officer, Government
Relations Executive, Employee Relations Executive, Chief Purpose Officer, and Diversity and
Inclusion Officer, among others. Often corporations will also designate a board member to take
on oversight of the CSR efforts within the organization.
These roles are certainly justified given the amount of work CSR initiatives undertake.
For instance, since many CSR efforts must involve the community in which the organization
does business, corporate partnerships naturally develop. For example, in the 2018 Corporate
Social Responsibility Report from the Xerox Corporation, Xerox lists 63 different public and
private institutions the organization partnered with that year to improve the environment.
Coordination of these varied relationships is an enormous and complicated responsibility that is
often done across departments and functions.
Given that organizations that adopt CSR as a vital part of the organization see it as a
necessary strategic component to success, socially responsible practices need to be woven into
the fabric of the organization. Through deliberate organizational design, CSR can be embedded
in such a way that will also advance the success of the company (Serafeim, 2020). The
thoughtful organizational design allows the organization to focus on turning a profit for
shareholders while also increasing value for stakeholders.
20

Regarding organizational change and organizational design, Burke and Litwin (1992)
introduced a causal model for organizational change that featured organizational structure as one
of the many highly influential and essential components for examining an organization. They
argued that the way an organization is designed also affects the way people behave in that
organization. Therefore, when a business is not meeting its goals, or when behaviors of the
people in the organization are preventing goals from being realized, the way an organization is
structured is one of the key factors that play a role in enabling or encouraging those behaviors.
Many studies (French & Bell, 1999; Furnham & Gunter, 1993; Howard, 1994; Jones &
Brazzel, 2006) have determined the Burke and Litwin model was an effective tool for
organizational development professionals to examine those aspects of organizations. Martins and
Coetzee (2009) found it useful to organize these aspects in terms of transactional or
transformational qualities. They identified the transactional elements as organizational structure,
motivation, management practices, systems, and individual needs and values as well as skills and
abilities. Transformational elements included the external environment, organizational culture,
leadership practices, individual and organizational outcomes, and defining vision, mission, and
strategy.
Galbraith’s (1977) Star Model of Organizational Design was chosen as the theoretical
framework for the present study as it is targeted specifically at the interactions between the
transactional aspects of the Burke & Litwin model. It is also one of the most widely used models
in the field of organizational development (Kesler & Kates, 2010) and as such can provide
context for identifying promising practices across organizations. The transformational aspects of
the Burke & Litwin model are different across industries and thus difficult to standardize or
generalize specific recommendations for common practice. The Galbraith Star Model’s focus on
21

organizing and examining the interrelationships of the transactional aspects of an organization
allows for an assessment of what works and what does not concerning an organization’s success.
Overview of Galbraith’s Star Model of Organizational Design
Galbraith’s model (Figure 2) came from his study of how information flows within an
organization. Galbraith’s (1973) study was conducted just as computing was emerging as a
disruptive change in the way businesses operate. How information flows were the determining
factor that led to the first matrixed organization (Galbraith, 1973). Building from that work
Galbraith (1977), introduced the Star Model as a means of creating a repeatable and deliberate
organizational design that takes into account the key factors he realized needed to be aligned to
produce positive results. Placing these factors on the star graphic effectively demonstrates that
they are all equal in importance and interconnected.
The key factors of the Star Model are strategy, structure, people, process, and rewards.
Each of the interrelated factors is described below.

22

Figure 2
Galbraith’s Star Model

Note. Adapted from Organization Design by J. R. Galbraith, 1977. Addison-Wesley. Copyright
1977 by Addison-Wesley.

Star Model: Strategy Component
The model uses organizational strategy as the entry point and seeks to align all other
factors to the organization’s purpose. To begin the organizational design process, the
organization needs to be clear about its overall business objectives and general means of
23

achieving those objectives. With a clear purpose as the baseline starting point, criteria for the
organizational design can be generated and used as the main factor to align the other components
in how they help the organization achieve that purpose.
Organizational strategy is considered a transformational element of organizational change
(Burke & Litwin, 1992), so it is fitting that it would guide the remaining more transactional
aspects of Galbraith’s model. Organizational strategies vary from company to company and thus
were different within each of the organizations involved in the present study. How companies
consider a strategy to set up the structure, processes, people, and rewards systems may be similar
across organizations.
For those companies with CSR commitment, social responsibility should be embedded
into organizational strategy (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Serafeim, 2020). If that is the case, it
will follow that all aspects of the Star Model will also have social responsibility built into them.
According to the Boston College Center for Corporate Social Responsibility (Smith, 2020),
“strategy is basically a company’s formula for success, encompassing the organization’s mission
as well as its business goals” (para. 6).
Star Model: Structure Component
From the strategy, the organizational design can be further developed by identifying what
roles are needed for attaining that strategy. Those roles will comprise the general structural
design of the organization. Needed functions will be grouped to achieve efficiencies through the
ease of sharing information as necessary. Galbraith (1977) created the Star Model with a focus
squarely on information processing, so it follows that he recommended that how people share
information be a prime consideration in the creation of the organizational structure.
24

The structure of CSR efforts varies from company to company (Lock & Seele, 2016).
Some are more vertically oriented with a leader of CSR sitting at the top of the organization,
usually with a title such as chief purpose officer or vice president of CSR. Others are more
horizontally oriented, with CSR functionality spread across departments throughout the
organization. In this case, leaders of individual departments are expected to apply CSR principles
aligned with organizational strategy as part of daily operations. Whichever is chosen for a given
organization (or a combination of both), according to Galbraith (1977), it should be dictated by
strategy and tested by how processes can function within that structure.
Star Model: Processes Component
The process component allows the organization to focus on how work will flow through
the structure it has designed. Workflows are identified and mapped out to see how the structure
can help achieve organizational goals (Galbraith, 1977). Improvements can then be made to
increase efficiencies and produce better outcomes. By examining the key organizational process,
the organizational designer can see if the right people are doing the right work and if the
structure itself helps or hinders that work (Kesler & Kates, 2010).
Examining processes related to CSR efforts is necessary on several levels. First, the
organizational designers and organizational leadership must determine if the processes
themselves are performed while living up to socially responsible principles (Mohrman & Shani,
2011). Second, the question of whether the process enables the organization to achieve stated
social responsibility objectives must be answered. Lastly, it is important to examine how well the
structure of the organization influences how well the processes are performed (Galbraith, 1977;
Kesler & Kates, 2010; Mohrman & Lawler, 2014).
25

Star Model: People Component
With the people component, Galbraith cautioned the organization to not simply consider
certain known individuals for particular roles in the organization, but rather specific
competencies that are necessary to perform needed tasks. Kesler and Kates (2010) also cautioned
against “designing around people in the sense that design decisions should not be made to
accommodate skill gaps in the existing organization” (p. 20). By focusing on needed
competencies before which individuals might be available to fill a role, the organization better
ensures that the right work is getting done by people with the right skills for the job.
Once the competencies needed for roles within the structure are determined it is also
important to consider how these competencies might be maintained or developed over time.
Recruitment efforts and learning and development strategies are also considered in the people
portion of the Star Model. Determining the level of support the people in the organization may
need to perform roles most effectively is then incorporated into the organizational design as the
people strategy for the organization.
As an initiative alone, CSR may require a certain set of attitudes, values, and beliefs, but
competencies are more about the skills needed to perform tasks to advance the organizational
strategy. Recruiting for and developing those attitudes, values, and beliefs would certainly be
embedded within the people strategy for the organization. Once embedded in the recruitment
process, commitment to CSR underlies the functionality of the business.
Star Model: Rewards Component
Another strength of the Star Model for organizational design is it also considers
psychological factors that may contribute to the behaviors of the people in the organization.
Specifically, Galbraith recognized that a critical component contributing to the success of any
26

organization is the motivation and well-being of employees. Identifying how people will be seen
and valued within the organizational design was an innovative factor when the model was first
developed. While it has long been recognized that what is rewarded influences individual
behaviors (Skinner, 1938), Galbraith’s method was one of the first to purposefully factor in
rewards as part of the design process. The consideration of rewards and recognition, both
performance and purpose-driven, is still widely seen as an important variable in organizational
design (Eirich et al., 2019).
The concept of key performance indicators (KPIs; Parmenter, 2015) suggests that when
clear measures of success are in place that those measures can drive desired behaviors. The
rewards component of the Star Model allows the organizational designer to identify those KPIs
and tie them to recognition and reporting systems. Highlighting KPIs related to CSR is critical to
the reporting and accountability of the organization to both internal and external stakeholders
(Hennigfeld & Tolhurst, 2006).
Interrelationships Between Components
Due to the interdependent relationship of the components within the Star Model, iterative
improvements from one component will often lead to changes in another component. For
instance, once an analysis of how processes might function within a proposed structure is
complete, the proposed structure might need to be altered to increase organizational capability
for performing processes. Another example of cascading change over time would be if metrics
change in the rewards component, then there may be a need to change competencies in the
people component to meet those metrics. One of the reasons the model is so effective is that it
allows for evolution within the interrelationships of the components (Galbraith et al., 2001;
Kesler & Kates, 2010). The evolutionary dynamic is especially important when building CSR
27

into the design of an organization (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Mohrman & Shani, 2011) as the
more businesses committed to CSR learn about sustainable practices the more organizations
must adapt.
Implementing Organizational Design as an Organizational Change
Implementing a new organizational design is a significant change for an organization
(Mohrman & Lawler, 2014). For the changes dictated by a new design to work overtime, paying
attention to the process of organizational change is often found in the literature (Mohrman &
Lawler, 2014). Without paying attention to factors related to organizational change, the transition
to the new approach may fail. For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many
organizations were attempting to save money and improve efficiencies by engaging in a process
known as reengineering (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996). The reengineering process
consisted of examining current processes in the organization, such as in the production or
delivery of a specific product or service and identifying ways to eliminate inefficiencies and
redundancies to produce the product or service more efficiently (Hammer & Champy, 1993). It
was found that while reengineering did produce short-term gains in both efficiency and
profitability, organizational systems that were initially removed as part of the process slowly
grew back (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996). Researchers into why these changes did not take
hold, found that to maintain newly implemented systems and processes there was a need to
manage change effectively (Kotter, 1995; Roberto & Levesque, 2005).
One of these researchers, John Kotter, published his findings related to why
transformation efforts fail in 1995. Kotter discovered that many of these change efforts were
failing for many of the same reasons. His identification of these companies’ common mistakes
led him to create eight specific stages that organizations must do for change to stick. Miss any of
28

these stages, Kotter argued, and a change effort stands a pretty good chance of failing. See
Figure 3 for an overview of Kotter’s process. A detailed description of Kotter’s model follows.

Figure 3
Kotter’s 8-Stage Change Process

Note. Adapted from Leading Change by J. Kotter, 1996. Harvard Business School Press.
Copyright 1996 by Harvard Business School Press.
29

Stage 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency
For change to happen, people must want it to happen as soon as possible. Even if the
whole organization cannot change at once, starting with one passionate group that is passionate
and committed to the change will help drive the change forward to the rest of the organization.
People must feel like it is imperative to change and often do so when they feel the problem the
organization is experiencing firsthand. For instance, if they see their company’s reputation fall in
the popular press due to a major error, people within the company will likely seek to be sure that
the mistake is not repeated. They will seek out things to change and create solutions to solve the
problem at hand.
Stage 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition
The change must be led by a dedicated group of highly influential, visible leaders who
back the change publicly every chance they get. Kotter (1996) advocated for bringing together a
guiding coalition of these leaders from all levels of the organization to coordinate common
messaging and action plans. He saw this as helpful for reinforcing the urgency and helping the
change gain momentum.
Stage 3: Developing a Vision and Strategy
The most compelling tool the guiding coalition can have to build urgency is a strong,
clear vision for the change. Ideally, this is a vision that everyone in the organization can see
themselves within. People must understand what the broad goal is and what you are asking them
to do to accomplish it.
Stage 4: Communicating the Change Vision
Once you have your vision, you must communicate it consistently, through as many
methods as possible, frequently, and powerfully. Ideally, the vision will be embedded in
30

communications about other work being done in the organization. People should be able to see
how their work and the work of others contribute to accomplishing the vision. Leaders should
talk about it every chance they get in multiple forums.
Stage 5: Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
Resistance to change is inevitable (Block, 2011), even if the change involves making the
business more sustainable and socially equitable. It’s the goal of leadership to remove obstacles
to accomplishing its mission by encouraging local ownership of the goal. Having direct control
of how to make a change a reality streamlines its adoption. Leaders should look for what needs
to be fixed, altered, or flat-out removed so that the change will have an easier time sliding into
place.
Stage 6: Generating Short-Term Wins
Another way to overcome resistance is for people to see the progress that is being made
to accomplish the vision. Seeing the change evolve and take hold increases the sense that it can
succeed and validates for the guiding coalition that its strategy toward change is working. Short-
term wins generate more energy for the change and give those involved a chance to be
recognized and celebrate their accomplishments. People are more likely to buy in and support
change that has shown evidence of working.
Stage 7: Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
Once you have some momentum and some short-term wins to publicize, Kotter argued,
you should make those changes public and permanent. The organization can point to successful
change and credibly let people know what to expect next. Also, with success comes more
investment. The organization is seen investing more in the strategic direction of the change, often
hiring more people, or bringing in additional equipment or resources. These investments become
31

tangible evidence of the commitment and belief that the change will continue as its progress
builds. As these gains become standard, it provides the guiding coalition an opportunity to reflect
on what worked and what can be improved as the changes continue to gain traction in the
organization.
Stage 8: Anchoring the New Approaches in Corporate Culture
Finally, the changes only stick when they become the norm. Make sure that changes are
seen in every aspect of the organization – from measurements and recognition to corporate
reports. This will help drive the change into the fabric of the culture of the organization.
For companies to change their organizational design Kotter’s (1996) research indicated
that following these stages would enable companies to adopt changes more successfully.
Galbraith’s (1977) model can be used to create a series of organizational changes. Kotter’s
model describes how to implement those changes.
Conceptual Framework
Figure 4 offers an overview of the Galbraith model and how it applies to this particular
study. Figure 4 provides examples of what elements might be found within each of the factors of
the Star Model. While Figure 4 is certainly not an exhaustive list of elements, it does provide the
reader with examples and a means to see their relationship to one another across the Star Model’s
factors. Using strategy as an entry point, elements of CSR can be purposefully and dynamically
embedded into an organization (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Serafeim, 2020). By putting CSR
goals into the purpose of the organization, everything that follows is aligned to achieving that
goal. The structure is created to achieve the best socially responsible outcomes. Processes are
created in socially responsible ways. People are selected where competencies needed for social
32

responsibility is either currently present or will be developed. Finally, achievements related to
CSR are recognized and celebrated.

Figure 4
Galbraith’s Star Model With a Focus on Elements of CSR

Note. Adapted from Organization Design by J. R. Galbraith, 1977. Addison-Wesley. Copyright
1977 by Addison-Wesley.

33

Summary
This chapter provided a review of the literature related to the origins and current state of
CSR in businesses and also provided an overview of organizational design theory and practices.
The purpose was to orient the reader to the key components of the present study and place its
research into an appropriate context. The literature has shown that CSR has evolved into being
seen as an essential part of the nature of business. For businesses to be able to achieve their goal
of providing a product or service in a socially responsible manner. they must be designed with
social responsibility at their core. Paying specific attention to how the organizational design
changes are implemented is key to those changes standing the test of time. The next chapter
outlines the methods for this dissertation study examining promising practices in designing
socially responsible organizations.

34

Chapter Three: Methodology
The purpose of the present study was to examine the evolution of the organizational
design of companies that have successfully embedded CSR into their business, identify lessons
learned from their experiences, and then make recommendations for how other organizations can
make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. The methodology chapter provides an
overview of the research question and the approach to data collection employed in the present
study. Beginning with reviewing the positionality of the researcher, an overview of the
participants, the research setting, and interview questions follow. Next, an analysis and
discussion of the credibility and trustworthiness of the research design are presented. The chapter
then concludes by examining ethical considerations and a review of potential limitations and
delimitations of the study.
Research Question
The following research question guided this study: What lessons learned can be derived
from socially responsible organizations for embedding CSR into the fabric of their business?
Overview of Design
This study employed a qualitative methodology to capture promising practices involved
in designing organizations with a CSR focus. The use of a qualitative methodology (Creswell &
Creswell, 2018) allowed me to take a constructivist approach (Crowther & Lauesen, 2017) and
build a set of findings and recommendations based on the lived experiences of participants
embedding CSR into organizations. Previous studies examining organizational structure and
sustainability (Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Mohrman & Shani, 2011) have used qualitative case
studies (Rashid et al., 2019) to explore the issue from a variety of sources. The present study
expands on that research.
35

The Researcher
I, the primary investigator in this study, am an organizational development professional
with over 25 years of experience working with organizational change, leadership development,
strategy development, and organizational design. My positionality was of a middle-aged, White,
American, male student researcher accustomed to working in a professional business setting. My
background may have provided some credibility in the eyes of the interview subjects and helped
to establish trust early in the research process. It was assumed that the subjects and I shared an
interest in making social change a positive and productive part of any organization. Their like
mindset regarding the importance of the work of CSR might have influenced the tenor of the
conversations but given the goal of using this research to maximize CSR impact through
organizational design, it was expected that the shared interest in the work would help the
conversation flow. I was aware that my positionality as a White male seeking the expertise of
males and females of a variety of races might influence the social dynamic and made a conscious
effort to build positive relationships with participants, remain neutral, listen intently, and respect
the participants’ points of view.
Data Sources: Site and Participant Selection
A semi-structured interview approach was adopted to ensure consistency in the
questioning while also allowing for flexibility based on the conversation. The interview process
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) allowed for the gathering of rich data from the participants regarding
the evolution of their organization’s CSR approach. By collecting these stories through the
interview approach, key aspects of organizational design were identified, enabling me to address
the questions for this study.
36

I used the roster of signatory-level participants in the United Nations Global Compact
(UNGC) to identify potential organizations for the study. These UNGC businesses have made
the public commitment to align strategies and operations with universal principles on human
rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption governance. To be a member of the UNGC, a
company must demonstrate that it has taken actions that advance societal goals in reports to the
United Nations. Many of the businesses involved with UNGC were well-established before
making the CSR commitment. Their involvement with the UNGC was one step to publicly
committing to CSR and showing their desire to change themselves so that they can affect change
in the world. Involvement in the UNGC can be at two levels. First, the participant level
demonstrates a public commitment from the CEO and organizational leadership to the principles
of the UNGC. Participants show that their company is leading the way globally in implementing
corporate sustainability in its business operations. Second, the signatory level includes making a
financial contribution to secure their position as a sustainability leader, gaining access to
resources developed by the CFO Coalition for the Sustainable Development Goals, and joining a
global community of companies leading the way in directing crucial funding toward realizing
those goals (UNGC, 2021).
The following criteria were used for participant selection:
● Companies have been actively involved in the UNGC for at least 7 years.
● Companies that participate in the UNGC at the active signatory level. This level of
commitment requires the company to have at least $50 million in annual revenue and
to make a financial contribution to the UNGC to engage fully with the local network
in their country.
● Companies based in the United States
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● Companies of substantial size (10000+ employees) so that their organizational design
would be fundamentally complex and challenging to change.
● Companies not originally formed with CSR as one of their central guiding principles.
● Companies that publish ESG scales on websites or through annual reports.
Forty-three companies met the criteria listed above. I aimed to conduct case studies of
five companies and interview one to two employees at each company involved in CSR. All the
individuals targeted to interview for this study were in leadership positions with titles such as
global sustainability officer, director of standards and quality, director of sustainability services,
corporate responsibility officer, and vice president of sustainability.
The recruitment process involved reaching out to connections in the CSR community to
be introduced to influential individuals in the identified companies. Participating companies were
determined by the availability of participants and their willingness to voluntarily participate in
this study. Participants were contacted through social networks, either via messaging or email to
determine interest. Priority was given to companies with great reputations for CSR and high
recommendations from the CSR community. My goal was to include companies from a variety
of industries such as technology, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
The final sample included a pharmaceutical company, an accounting company, a food
manufacturing company, a metals recycler, and a technology company. A total of eight
participants were interviewed across these organizations. For more information about the study’s
participants, see Chapter Four.
Data Collection
I conducted the interviews conducted online via videoconference. The participant and I
were able to both see and hear each other clearly while being in the environment of our choice.
38

Interviews were recorded with the permission of the subject of the interview and transcribed for
analysis after the interviews were conducted. Each interview took place over a 30- to 60-minute
timeframe which allowed for the establishment of rapport between the subject and me and
allowed plenty of time for clarifying follow-up questions while respecting the subject’s time and
commitment to the study. All interviews followed the same protocol (see Appendix A).
Instrumentation
The interview questions were designed to allow the participants to tell the story of their
company’s CSR journey and detail the reasoning behind the steps the organization took to design
itself for that journey. I utilized a semi-structured interview approach (Johnson & Christensen,
2015; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) by creating an interview guide where standard questions were
prepared, but also allowed for flexibility to adjust as needed in the context of the interview. The
interview questions were designed to capture elements of the Star Model of organizational
design. The interview protocol was evaluated by members of the dissertation committee,
organizational design professionals, and professionals in the CSR workspace.
Data Analysis
Qualitative analysis of the transcripts of the interviews was conducted by employing a
constructivist approach (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) which allowed for general observations
across all the subjects to emerge. Then, the next phase of analysis involved looking at the
verbatim through the lens of Galbraith’s (1977) Star Model for organizational design. Transcripts
of the interviews were coded and verbatims grouped by each component of the Star Model.
These grouped statements were then reviewed for emerging sub-themes with the goal of
understanding the specific nuances these companies took toward that organizational design
39

component. These levels of analyses led to capturing lessons learned and formulating answers to
the main research question.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
To be credible and trustworthy, a qualitative study must be conducted with careful
consideration of the different factors that may influence or prejudice the results (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). The factors that may be particularly relevant to the present study included
researcher bias, positionality, and power as well as potential biases or fears from participants.
Steps were taken to ensure the reduced negative impact of these potential traps and further
enhance the credibility of the data collected.
To address the issues of researcher bias, positionality, and power, this study first
acknowledges that these may be issues inherent to any qualitative research (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016). Published guidelines provided by the institutional review board (IRB) were adhered to
throughout the data collection process. Additionally, to mitigate the potential influence of these
factors, I was meticulous in documenting the entirety of the data collection process and created
an audit trail to document every stage of the data collection process. The audit trail includes the
interview verbatims so that themes and conclusions could be corroborated by a third party, if
necessary. Also included in the audit trail were interviewer journals consisting of notes and
reflections on the interviews themselves that were completed immediately after each discussion
as well as documenting the data analysis process. The interviewer attempted to consistently
capture and document instances of bias or times where assumptions played a role in the
interviews themselves.
Credibility and trustworthiness were further enhanced by attempting to collect data with
maximum variation (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) across multiple points within multiple
40

organizations. Commonalities found by engaging five companies from five distinct industries,
carry more credibility than focusing on one specific industry. Also, given that the organizations
themselves are already viewed as being successful at employing a CSR ethic, best practices that
are found consistently across these organizations carry credible weight.
Ethics
Beneficence, the concept of the researcher not causing harm while maximizing benefits,
was the central ethical principle underlying this study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The study’s
design was subject to IRB approval before any contact with potential participants. All
participants understood the research process well before agreeing to participate in this study
openly and were provided the opportunity to withdraw for any reason. They acknowledged they
were properly informed of this study’s purpose, process, and design by verbally confirming so at
the beginning of each recorded interview. All participants entered the study with the
understanding they would not be compensated for their participation so as not to bias the data.
Participants’ identities and their companies were not disclosed so that they could feel
comfortable sharing their stories openly with me. Only general industries and the amount of time
at the signatory level of the UNGC were disclosed to increase confidence in the validity of the
data collected. Videoconference recordings were destroyed as soon as the study was complete to
avoid any potential harm through any unintended use.
Summary
The methodology chapter provided an overview of the research question and the
approach to data collection employed in the present study. Beginning with reviewing my
positionality, an overview of the participants, the research setting, and interview questions
followed. Next, analysis and discussion of the credibility and trustworthiness of the research
41

design were presented. The chapter concluded by examining ethical considerations and a review
of potential limitations and delimitations of the study. Chapter Four will present detailed findings
from this research.

42

Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of the present study was to examine the evolution of the organizational
design of companies that have successfully embedded CSR into their business, identify lessons
learned from their experiences, and then make recommendations for how other organizations can
make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. Galbraith’s (1977) Star Model of
organizational design provided the framework used to examine five socially responsible
organizations across disparate industries to identify common factors for success. This chapter
begins by providing an overview of these companies and those interviewed for this study,
followed by a detailed exploration of lessons learned across these companies. The following
research question guided this study: What lessons learned can be derived from socially
responsible organizations for embedding CSR into the fabric of their business?
Participants
This study collected data from eight individuals from five organizations distinguished
from belonging to the UNGC as being consistently committed to social responsibility. All the
individuals interviewed for this study were in leadership positions with titles such as global
sustainability officer, director of standards and quality, director of sustainability services,
corporate responsibility officer, and vice president of sustainability. All participants had
firsthand knowledge of their organization’s evolution on their CSR journey. Companies targeted
for participation in this study were all leaders within their industries and had been at the
signatory level with the UNGC for at least 7 years. Those companies included a multinational
manufacturer of food products, a global pharmaceutical company, a multinational mobile
communications corporation, a big-four accounting firm, and an American industrial metals
43

company. To preserve the anonymity of all participants and their organizations, alias’ were used
for participants, and pseudonyms were used to represent companies (Table 1).

Table 1
Study Participants
Company
(pseudonym)
Participants
(alias)
Time working
in CSR
Industry Time as a UN Global
Compact signatory
Big Food Arthur
Bonnie
7 years
16 years
Food
manufacturing
7 years
Iron Man Clyde
Deidre
12 years
16 years
Metals 11 years
Big Pharma Emma 6 years Pharmaceuticals 20 years
Big Tech Fiona 10 years Mobile
communications
9 years
Big Numbers George
Harry
13 years
10 years
Accounting 14 years

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Findings
In interviews, participants shared numerous stories about the company’s evolution during
their CSR journey. From an analysis of these interviews, eight of the 10 lessons learned aligned
with the Galbraith’s (1977) Star Model in that they discussed changes made in organizational
strategy, structure, processes, rewards and recognition, and people practices. Table 2 provides an
overview of these findings. Two additional themes outside Galbraith’s model also emerged.
Table 3 provides a review of these findings. A detailed presentation of all 10 lessons learned
follows.

45

Table 2
Overview of Findings Related to Star Model of Organizational Design
Lesson learned Organizational
design factors
Present in Sample quote
CSR strategy
needs to be led
from the top.
Strategy
Structure
All (CSR) Starts from the top then
filters down into things like the
way you are operating. Everything
ties into that overall business
strategy.
Actively
encourage
shifting
mindsets.
Strategy
People
Big Numbers
Big Tech
Big Food
Previously, it was not the core of the
business. and I think what’s been
an interesting shift is the way that
these things have now become the
core of the business. The world
has shifted. Societal expectations
have shifted. It moved from being
a bolt-on to a built-in part of the
work.
Incorporate CSR
into mission
and value
statements.
Strategy All We’ve called out specifically
community engagement as part of
our values.

Align C-suite
with local
leaders.
Structure
Process
Big Food
Iron Man

I have champions all over the world
in 56 business units whom I
support as the global sustainability
officer.
Enable partners to
adopt CSR
values.
Strategy
Process
Big Food
Big Tech
There seems to be a mentality that
it’s about how can we create more
win-win situations where
everybody is gaining something.”
Measure and
recognize
progress.

Rewards All It’s important to be looking for those
moments of praise because it’s
beneficial to all of us and it also
creates a network where we can
recognize best practices and not
46

Lesson learned Organizational
design factors
Present in Sample quote
reinvent the wheel on multiple
things.
Invest in people
development.
People Big Food
Iron Man
Big Numbers
Last year we trained over 100
employees in logistics of
sustainability, you know, to be
able to them identify and
understand where they have an
impact.
Be publicly
accountable.
Rewards All Trust is the only thing that will keep
you having your license to operate
tomorrow, and we know that trust
also will bring you additional
sales. Our product must be trusted.

Table 3
Additional Lessons Learned
Lesson learned Present in Related to literature
Organizational change
practices enable
organizational
design.
All Kotter’s 8-stage model of organizational change
(Kotter, 1996)
Develop a stakeholder
strategic business
perspective for
CSR.
Big Food
Big Numbers
Iron Man
Stakeholder perspective of CSR (Carroll, 1991)

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Lesson Learned 1: CSR Strategy Needs to Be Led From the Top
Leading from the top was a lesson that was mentioned by all interviewees. Leading from
the top was seen as important because it coordinated efforts across each company and avoided
siloed work while also demonstrating to stakeholders the company’s commitment to being
socially responsible. Each of these outcomes from leading from the top are explained in detail
below.
Coordinating Efforts and Avoiding Silos
When CSR efforts are not driven from the central source at the top of the organization,
silos are easily formed in these organizations. The lack of coordination meant a lot of missed
opportunities, redundant efforts, wasted money, and less of an impact on CSR goals. At Big
Food, Bonnie provided an example of negative outcomes when CSR was not well coordinated
from the top. She saw staff focus on different aspects of climate change and then use different
approaches to tackle their specific area of concentration rather than working together, thus
creating severe inefficiencies:
There’s a tendency to go into silos where someone will focus on climate action from a
planet lens and another might focus on climate action from a people and resilience lens,
but gosh shouldn’t we be focusing together? So, trying to bust down those silos between
environment and social sustainability is another challenge. Not working well together,
and not being aligned means bad things happen, money gets wasted, and work does not
get done.
The creation of silos among the many teams charged with implementing and reinforcing
socially responsible practices and processes was a common pitfall among those interviewed.
Fiona in Big Tech described that lack of coordination as being inefficient and costly:
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We’ve got all these great investments, but we really need to operationalize those, and put
them sort of under one roof. Some of it lived in Hr. Some of it lived in our government
affairs team. Some of it lived in our engineering teams, and, so, it was really sort of our
attempt to get our arms around it, and really make it a little bit more streamlined.
From Big Pharma, Emma reiterated how leading from the top of the organization helped
eliminate the effects of siloed work, “We have a lot of misalignments as any big company does.
Sometimes people go off on their own.” The lesson learned from her perspective was that
misalignment leads to lessening the impact of socially responsible goals and supports missing
opportunities for growth. She saw increased alignment when it was coordinated through a single
leader in the C-suite.
Everyone interviewed acknowledged that having a leader at the top of the organization to
guide and oversee the coordination of CSR helped eliminate these silos. Deidre from Iron Man
specifically mentioned where her position was placed in the organization as a factor she
considered when accepting her role. She recognized that for her role to be successful it needed to
be tied to strategy, driven from the top, and related to the core function of the business. Deidre
said,
I think if you’re not reporting into the sustainability organization, you know the best it
can be the CEO if they’re a believer in it like ours, but I’m thrilled that I’m reporting up
through sustainability and directly into strategy. What attracted me to Iron Man and this
position was the fact that it sat in strategy -strategy and sustainability. It’s no longer the
tree-hugging hippie that sits over in the corner and tries to influence that authority. No,
it’s central to the core and a lever that we see as a competitive advantage and is integrated
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into business plans, right? That’s the holy grail when you have evolved to a point where
you are at the table when doing strategic planning.
Demonstrating Commitment
Harry from Big Numbers recognized that having the CEO drive the organization’s
efforts to be socially responsible was a clear demonstration of commitment to CSR being
fundamental to the business’s success. He said, “[CSR] starts from the top then filters down into
things like the way you are operating. Everything ties into that overall business strategy.” He
continued to emphasize the importance of “baking it [sustainability] into the organization” as an
essential factor for success. For that kind of systemic effect, the vision and effort would need to
be led from the top. He added,
A lot of the credit goes to John [alias] for pushing the sustainability agenda so early,
right? He’s clearly a big part of the success. He’s now Big Number’s chief sustainability
and responsibility officer, sitting on our global management committee reporting to our
CEO. He has been an important architect of Big Number’s response to changing
expectations about this.
George from Big Numbers agreed. He argued that when it’s led from the top and
emphasized accordingly/reinforced, everyone in the company, regardless of role or department
hears the same message, can connect to the CSR strategy, and figure out how to support it.
“Ultimately, you want the person buying the pencils to have the same focus as the CEO on
sustainability,” he said.
Additionally, having the CEO as the public face of a socially responsible organization
was key to managing public perception and organizational reputation. As Fiona from Big Tech
said, “Where this function resides within the company influences how it shows up outside of the
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company.” If a company wanted to demonstrate its commitment to being socially responsible, it
would want its CEO and Board of Directors to be the public faces of that effort.
Lesson Learned 2: Actively Encourage Shifting Mindsets
In the stories of all these companies’ CSR journeys, there were philanthropic efforts to
engage the community at the beginning. Philanthropy was initially seen as a “feel-good” effort,
rather than an essential part of how they did their business. As these companies’ stories
continued, their CSR commitment was strengthened by making it part of their overall business
strategy. People in all the organizations participating in this study had to change their
perspectives on philanthropy and community investments. Harry, in Big Numbers, described this
change as shifting the mindset from CSR “is a nice to have to [CSR] is a part of the work we
do,” which they described as a significant challenge. People who had not seen CSR efforts as a
priority, now needed to adopt a new mindset and see CSR as fundamental to what the
organization was about. This mindset shift was a change in worldview. Harry, in Big Numbers,
elaborated,
Previously, it was not the core of the business. and I think what’s been an interesting shift
is the way that these things have now become the core of the business. The world has
shifted. Societal expectations have shifted. It moved from being a bolt-on to a built-in
part of the work.
Prior to establishing more comprehensive CSR approaches, the work of philanthropy and
community investments were viewed primarily as opportunities for publicity. Fiona in Big Tech
highlighted why the change in perspective on why CSR was an important challenge:
Changing mindsets from “we are doing this from a marketing and comms perspective,” to
a “this is a part of our culture” perspective can be a challenge. I think marketing and
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comms are part of CSR and I do think that there are companies out there who are making
these investments just to check a box. I know that sounds kind of cynical, but I do think
that there is some component of that. But I think one of the things that make us different
is that there’s always been this culture of philanthropy from the very beginning and
people have carried that culture throughout that our entire evolution.
Others also mentioned the relatively recent shift in internal attitudes toward making CSR
a core part of the business. Specifically, the added emphasis at the corporate level on a
commitment to sustainability has noticeably increased in recent years. As Arthur in Big Food,
put it,
I saw a very clear shift. Before I joined this business there was no call for sustainability. I
mean there were some micro-actions, like reducing energy consumption, but then things
accelerated to today where we are committing to carbon neutrality by 2025. There has
been a shift in urgency.
George in Big Numbers said, “We have been good at doing this stuff on the side, as an
add-on now we are having to shift to it is fundamental to the business.” The interviews
demonstrate the necessity of that mindset shift, so the lesson learned is to actively encourage that
shift to occur. All of those interviewed saw this shift in mindset as driven from the top of the
organization with CEOs making CSR an organizational priority and emphasizing its critical role
in the business. The shift was critical to enacting organizational strategy related to CSR
successfully.
Lesson Learned 3: Incorporate CSR Into Mission and Value Statements
One step toward embedding a CSR mindset into organizational strategy is to incorporate
it into the organization’s mission and/or values statements. Almost all the people interviewed for
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this study called out how having these values woven into mission and values statements made it
easier for people to see the organization’s sincere commitment to these principles. It also
provided employees with a broader sense of purpose, as now the work they were performing was
contributing to the common good.
Every company represented in this study had stated corporate values that were consistent
with CSR. Interviewees offered examples, including “we base decisions on mutuality of benefits
to our stakeholders,” “we innovate every day to make the world a healthier place,” and
“collaborative community and unquestioned integrity are at the core of everything we do.”
Once values were woven into mission statements, they could be used to guide strategic business
practices while also promoting a sense of corporate identity. Fiona indicated that the value of
community engagement was at the core of Big Tech’s purpose by sharing,
We’ve called out community engagement specifically as part of our values. That also
helps to recognize it more formally than just saying, “Hey, this is a really great thing that
we’re doing.” But it is actually written as part of our values underneath our people focus
area.
Similarly, Emma at Big Pharma saw their corporate values woven into everything they do
at the company. For Big Pharma, CSR values are tied directly to organizational strategy:
We have corporate values. They are woven through just about everything for Big
Pharma. I’m pretty sure that they report on how we are doing demonstrating those values
throughout the whole organization. So that would be a great example of how values are
kind of incorporated into the strategy. And then the structure is dictated by that strategy.
Harry at Big Numbers saw organizational values as providing a sense of purpose which
he stated was essential for the business to move forward, “If you don’t feel a sense of belonging
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or a sense of purpose, it doesn’t matter what kind of executive practices you have in place.
Organizational values clarify purpose.” At Iron Man, its mission and values had been
incorporated into the organization’s business model and had come to life by being used to guide
actions throughout Iron Man. Clyde at Iron Man demonstrated pride and passion for enacting the
organization’s CSR mission and values:
We put all these goals out, putting sustainability on the map. So, let’s leverage it. Let’s
continue to lead what it looks like. We created our purpose: shaping a sustainable world
together. What we’re doing now is really that next step, which is what I would call the
activation of purpose.
Lesson Learned 4: Align C-suite With Local Leaders
Having a corporate leader (board level or C-suite) advocate for, guide, and measure
progress on key CSR (or ESG) elements while coordinating with other site-specific directly
responsible individuals was a common practice among four of the five organizations
participating in this study. These site-specific “champions” monitor the execution in specific
locations so that they are accountable that the work is conforming to CSR standards. As Arthur
in Big Food said, “I have champions all over the world in 56 business units whom I support as
the global sustainability officer.” For Arthur, these are indirect reports he supports, with him as
the corporate leader of sustainability sitting at the strategic level.
Both Big Food and Iron Man used the matrixed model of having site champions to
ensure alignment with corporate sustainability goals at a local level. Big Numbers also had local
leaders to advance and monitor its sustainability practices. Clyde at Iron Man described the
reporting process as follows:
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The Steering Council is really the strategy and the oversight within sort of the everyday
business. The site champions make recommendations, which go to the Steering Council
to approve things, and then they go to our CEO who communicates with the managing
director of the Board.
Building on that Deidre, also from Iron Man, adds,
We are highly matrixed, more so than in any other business. And so, while I have the
environmental side of things as well as the charitable side of things, I have a government
affairs VP that we work very, very closely with. Similarly, on the operational side, I
report to the chief strategy officer. Then from a governance perspective again highly
matrixed, we have lots of councils and Steer-co’s to make sure that we have all the
appropriate business units and perspectives at the table because sustainability absolutely
hits every single aspect of our business and it’s the coalition of all the different metrics,
all the different things that we track, and the programs, etc. that I rely heavily on these
sort of internal peer groups and partnerships because we are so matrix globally.
The common practice of having a centralized strategic head at the top of the organization
coordinate and work with local focal points create an informed, business, and process-focused
model for sustained engagement with CSR. This lesson learned advocates for the consideration
of a matrixed structure for implementation and alignment. The matrixed organizations examined
here were created by establishing a common goal in organizational mission and values, creating
role clarity towards accomplishing that goal, and putting in place systems and structures that
enable accountability such as performance metrics and ESG reporting.
Big Pharma was the only company to not specifically call out a matrixed structure as a
means for implementing its CSR strategy. Emma described her organization’s commitment to
55

CSR as woven into all parts of its organizational design and led by consistent values and
organizational goals coordinated at the c-level. She said these goals are consistently reinforced
throughout the organization, to the point of being assessed during an individual’s performance
management discussion.
Lesson Learned 5: Enable Partners to Adopt CSR Values
Big Food and Big Tech realized that for sustainability to work, they needed to help others
in their ecosystem do so as well. For instance, if a supplier could not produce their product
sustainably, a useful strategy was for a company to help them make the changes necessary to be
sustainable rather than simply looking for another supplier. Instead, investing in the supplier
benefits both the company and the supplier by creating a long-term relationship with aligned
values. Enabling others to adopt CSR values is very much in line with the idea of stakeholder
capitalism and was prevalent in many of the organizations involved in this study.
The idea that we “succeed better together than apart” was prevalent and consistent with
the mindset that CSR is “who we are.” Stories about how these companies invest in their partners
inspired phrases like “raise all boats” and “mutual benefit.” Ultimately, this type of investment
led to increased profits/value for both parties. Arthur at Big Food went into detail about how a
focus on the health of connections within the ecosystem leads to a sound adoption of CSR:
Today, we talk about having a healthy ecosystem. So, we believe a company can only
thrive if all actors in the ecosystem are also healthy. We want to have a healthy business,
but if my customers, suppliers, retailers, and even farmers where I buy rice, for instance,
in Myanmar or China, or Thailand, if they do not have a proper income, they are not
healthy. If I’m a healthy company, I must make sure again that everything that is behind
the curtain, behind the scenes is also so.
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Arthur sees the purpose of Big Food as providing a healthy product to create a healthier
world. He points out how that mission drives his company’s interactions with its suppliers
enlisting their buy-in to the same mission. He expands on the idea of creating a partnership with
his suppliers to meet a common goal as being of mutual benefit with the following example:
We built a factory in Russia in 2004. 20 years ago, almost. We had to import lots of raw
materials at the time because in Russia we are not finding all materials. We looked for
potential suppliers and had to grow them in. It took us sometimes 5 years of
collaboration, teaching them even how to do things so that they could become a local
supplier in the future. We know that if I take time to invest in your business, maybe even
buy trucks for you as a supplier of raw material, even support you with investment, etc. I
know that in 5 years it will pay off for me. This is, I think, an example of why mutuality
is important. When I was talking about having a healthy ecosystem, it’s really the idea of
mutuality. I know that if I help you, I will also benefit. It’s not I win / you lose, or you
lose / I win. It’s really, we win together. And we share the benefit, which I think is also
very important in the approach of the company.
Consistent with her colleague’s statements, Bonnie in Big Food added her perspective on
the mutual benefits of enabling partners to adopt Big Food’s values:
If you lay out an ultimatum and say “you must do this if you want to do business with
me” it doesn’t work. They don’t do that. They will tell you to take your business
elsewhere. From our perspective, we’ve been investing in the capability building of
suppliers. That’s really thorny stuff. It’s not just the environmental stuff, which is thorny,
but also from a human rights perspective. What does it look like to recruit migrant
workers responsibly? How do you do that when the country you’re recruiting workers
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from is super corrupt, and then their own government system might be part of the
problem? Instead of telling them, we expect you to do this or that, we are funding third-
party human rights coaches to embed in our operation and advise them on how to do this.
Bonnie recognized that this type of investment is not feasible with every strategic partner,
but with the few that are key to Big Food’s business in a particular part of the world, it can be a
mutually beneficial investment:
We are not going to do that with everybody, we are doing it with a strategic supplier with
whom we are going to have a long-term contract. The benefit is mutual. I’m investing in
you to be able to come and meet my standard, which, by the way, is probably going to be
required by law in the near future. So, you’re going to do that because (a) you want my
business, hopefully, and (b) you might want some of my reputation, and (c) you see that
the EU is trying to pass through diligence regulations that suggest you’re going to have to
figure this out anyway. We’re coming at this as a coach. We can’t do it everywhere,
there’s a limit to the scalability of that model because it is deep and narrow but the
premise of it all is shortening our supply chain, working with fewer suppliers, and
investing in helping them help us.
Fiona from Big Tech highlighted how the community of corporate leaders in CSR has
collectively adopted this “win-win” approach to achieving socially responsible results and
profitability. She said,
One of the things that I’ve been hearing about when talking to a lot of people involved in
sustainability within other organizations is that there seems to be a mentality that it’s
about how can we create more win-win situations where everybody is gaining something.
I’m not hearing people say that if we adopt a sustainability framework that means we’re
58

going to be having a leg up on our competition, as the main thing. It’s not like an I
win/you lose kind of proposition. it’s more like we’re going to adopt a sustainability ethic
in our work and that means that we’re going to raise all boats as well.
The means by which these companies went about creating these relationships were to be
building partnerships with key stakeholders, acknowledging common goals and mutual purposes,
and then working together to maximize each of their business’s success. The primary driver
underlying building these partnerships is to maximize profitability while also demonstrating a
commitment to being socially responsible.
Lesson Learned 6: Measure and Recognize Progress
Everyone interviewed discussed the importance of recognizing the progress made and
accomplishments in realizing their CSR mission through both internal and external programs.
Internal programs consisted of a variety of approaches including one-on-one recognition from
managers to more formal “spot” awards requiring the submission of nominations. These more
formal internal programs recognized things like living the organization’s values or fulfilling the
organization’s community-centered mission. Less formal recognition included encouraging
managers to complement and reinforce behaviors consistent with CSR. As Fiona from Big Tech
put it, “I am a big fan of when you see it, praise it.” Clyde from Iron Man expanded on the
importance of informal praise as a part of the daily life of a manager:
I would say the last 2 years [due to the COVID-19 pandemic], have obviously made in-
person meetings difficult for my site champions. Some of these folks don’t get to travel
beyond their country or plant or area, and, so, bringing them together for certain events,
making sure that my regional presidents know who these folks are when they go and visit
and have the statistics, praising them a project, or success and copying in key senior
59

people and their manager to let them know you are doing an awesome job. We make it
very visible. It’s important to be looking for those moments of praise because it’s
beneficial to all of us and it also creates a network where we can recognize best practices
and not reinvent the wheel on multiple things. I am constantly looking for ways to praise
great things.
External rewards included applying to nationally or internationally recognized corporate
rewards for aspects of social responsibility including industry-specific rewards and professional
association awards. For instance, Big Tech mentioned submitting for the Best Places to Work
designation as a marketing strategy. While companies did seek external rewards, they were not
mentioned by any company as a factor for increasing motivation toward achieving CSR goals.
Instead, they were seen as tool for creating positive publicity.
All companies maintained a strong focus on broad organizational metrics for
accountability to demonstrate progress toward CSR goals at a corporate level. CSR goals were
determined broadly and then worked into individual performance metrics. Whether it was a
corporate leader or front-line staff person, individual performance toward these corporate goals
was linked to personal rewards like compensation. As Arthur is Big Food put it,
We have what we call profit-sharing where you get to share the benefit of the company.
Profit-sharing is indexed on 4 or 5 factors, including quality and sustainability. So,
locally we have different KPIs to measure our sustainability progress or progress on
quality. Meeting our goals leads to a global profit-sharing bonus that people can take. So,
it’s in the interest of everyone to measure our progress.
Harry in Big Numbers pointed out that his company’s regular reporting to stakeholders is
structured around organizational goals based on organizational. Measuring progress toward
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achieving was how the organization reported on its over health. Components of CSR recently
have played a prominent role in demonstrating organizational performance:
We see standard means of measuring and reporting on organizational performance, using
all that kind of top-line stuff like your business strategy and business goals and KPIs to
identify what it means to be successful and insufficient. If you define success as all
revenue growth, profit growth, customer growth, or whatever your standard business
metrics are then you won’t change when trying to implement ESG practices into your
business. We have adopted a 360-value scorecard. All our performance reporting is based
on these six elements: client, financial, sustainability, inclusion and diversity, experience,
and talent. And each one has different metrics associated with that. When the CEO shares
our org performance, she will touch on all these things as part of our business update. The
scorecard idea is not new, but the prominence of ESG-type elements takes it higher in
terms of accountability and rewards and reinforces our commitment to these things.
Emma in Big Pharma focused on the importance of soliciting feedback through an
employee survey as a measurement of progress. For her, the measurement was made for
informing additional improvements rather than recognition of achievement. Although it is easy
to speculate that recognition of improvements made based on test/re-test survey results would
naturally follow. She said,
We are encouraged to share that feedback, through the Big Pharma voice survey which
gives an organizational type of view, not an individual leadership, but an organizational
type, on those same values, goals, and objectives. You’re getting it at the leader level,
which is helpful for people. Up and down the leaders of those larger organizations come
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back and say, “Hey, these are our scores this year, and, so, we’re going to work on X Y,
or Z to see if we can improve them.”
Lesson Learned 7: Invest in People Development
If CSR is a fundamental part of organizational strategy, how a company recruits and
develops its people would naturally be an affected organizational component. Companies
participating in this study focused on the people component of organizational design in several
ways, but each involved an investment in their people. Employee development became focused
on those skills and mindsets needed to thrive in a CSR-driven organization. With both
recruitment and employee development, each organization recognized that investment in people
development was required for their strategy to succeed and be sustainable.
Developing site champions from a central corporate hub was a fundamental part of
Clyde’s work at Iron Man. His investment was one of time. He said,
And then it’s the training of my site champions. Me saying this is what CSR is, this is our
strategy, here’s what it’s not, here’s how we run it, and this is what good looks like. It’s
constant. I talk to probably five or six site champions a day, so it is constant coaching,
and then some people leave or move on to new roles and then I start all over again. It is
constant coaching and learning.
Arthur at Big Food spoke of a similar experience, though his investment included both
time and money. He said,
Obviously, we need to train people. I have a dedicated budget for training. Last year we
trained over 100 employees in logistics of sustainability, you know, to be able for them to
identify and understand where they have an impact. All my champions get dedicated
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training every year, and most of them are also studying sustainability part-time in
universities. It’s super important, but it’s a real challenge.
Almost everyone interviewed were able to identify specific skills their companies were
looking to both recruit for and develop internally. Bonnie from Big Food said, “Competencies
we are looking to develop include the ability to influence without authority and dealing with
ambiguity.” Deidre at Iron Man elaborated much further on the need for systems thinking, even
citing the UN’s recognition of systems thinking as critical for realizing sustainability goals. She
said,
The UN came up with a white paper that talks about the four characteristics of a
sustainable mindset. When you dig into each of those, there are specific capabilities and
abilities that we now seek out and train for. For instance, like systems thinking. It sounds
so simple, but how many times do you make a decision in a day and actually stop and
think about the upstream impact and the downstream impact, or what it does to your other
peer groups? It’s really having a 360 perspective and understanding the decisions that
you make that have a ripple effect. And, so, that is not something you’re going to just
learn, like a skill. It’s a mindset you have to encourage and develop.
The paper Deidre is referring to is by Wiek et al. (2011) where they identified five key
competencies for sustainability. The competencies were systems thinking competence,
anticipatory competence, normative competence, strategic competence, and interpersonal
competence. These authors subsequently added the sixth competency in 2016, called “integrated
problem-solving.”
Just like the approach previously described in Lesson Learned 5, recruitment strategies
also involved investing in the learning programs within their communities to yield results in the
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long term by building the skills of potential workforce candidates. Essentially, their investments
were about creating the workforce they needed for the future. As Fiona in Big Tech described it,
Our workforce development initiatives are all tied to making sure that we have a pipeline
that we’re able to pull from. When we’re hiring, we’re pulling those students from
programs where we are making investments.
Deidre from Iron Man saw the investment as mutually beneficial. She said,
Neighbors, you know, are our key stakeholders. we need to be proactive about serving
the needs of the community, while also pursuing our business needs. Workforce
development and local talent development help us run our plants, so we need to make
sure that we have those talent pipelines.
This community investment approach essentially allows the company to create its own
talent pool while benefiting the community by providing career opportunities that would
otherwise not be present.
Lesson Learned 8: Be Publicly Accountable
Societal expectations for CSR accountability continue to grow. Even while this study was
being conducted, the SEC proposed new climate disclosure requirements as part of ESG
reporting for listed companies in the United States (de la Gorce et al., 2022). Every one of the
organizations participating in this study has had public goals and results related to ESG already
in their annual reports, websites, marketing materials, etc. for many years. Given these
companies’ long-standing commitment to the UNGC, being a bit ahead of this societal
expectation of accountability should be expected.
As Fiona at Big Tech said, “ESG is becoming such a big part of your SEC reporting and
a lot of companies who are entering that world that just doesn’t have the experience with it that
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we do.” She went on to recommend that the people involved in CSR at these companies just
entering the ESG space reach out to their counterparts in companies like hers to learn the lay of
the land, adding,
I think when the rubber hits the road, one of the things that have helped me the most has
really been talking to people at other companies that do my job and sharing best practices
and developing relationships. I can pick up the phone and call Sam at XYZ company and
be like, “Hey, Sam, what are you guys doing for sustainability reporting?” And we’re
able to have a very candid conversation about what things look like at XYZ, and why it
matters, and kind of talk shop a little bit. I think the space is so small that it’s important to
have those types of relationships and connections with other professionals in this field
because you get to bounce ideas off each other and really kind of share what things have
worked and what things haven’t really worked, and I think that’s really been valuable to
me.
The impact of public accountability was emphasized by all of those interviewed.
Participants saw accountability as a point of integrity, potentially enhancing both internal and
external perceptions of the company. Arthur in Big Food explained why being publicly
accountable is essential:
What stakeholders want is trust. We have been saying to everyone we’ve got the best
products, and it’s true, everywhere I go people are super-happy with our products. But
this will not be relevant 5 or 10 years from now if what is happening behind the curtain is
not right. It must be right from end to end. Not only the positive effect we can have on
our consumers, but the way we buy our materials must be the best. The way we design
our products, and the way we treat our employees, all must be the best. So, this notion of
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trust for me is super important, and trust is the only thing that will keep you having your
license to operate tomorrow, and we know that trust also will bring you additional sales.
Our product must be trusted.
George dove deeper into how ESG goals are set and how the system at Big Numbers
reinforces accountability to the goals set by his firm:
I mean, even within Big Numbers now, we’ve set a corporate goal of 50-50 gender
balance by 2025 with 25% of our partner-level being women and that goal is on our
global CHRO [chief human resource officer] scorecard and some part of her bonus and
comp is tied to the achievement of that goal. We have similar things around goals related
to Net 0 and water and waste usage and all that kind of stuff in exactly the same way that
we have goals tied to our revenue and our profit margins and market share, and all of that
good stuff as well. Those goals are set by a combination of the board and the Ex-co
together. Ideally, you do that in collaboration with other stakeholders. So, as you are
setting that business strategy and goals through consultation, dialogue, what would you
want to see, etc., and then following up by reporting outcomes to stakeholders.
Lesson Learned 9: Organizational Change Practices Enable Organizational Design
It was observed that all the companies interviewed for this study followed Kotter’s
(1996) eight-stage method for managing change without intentionally doing so. They organically
applied Kotter’s change management principles without ever intending to follow any sort of
change management framework. This section details how these companies naturally applied each
of Kotter’s eight stages while implementing CSR practices as part of their organizational design.
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Applied Stage 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency
One of the companies in this study, Big Pharma, lost a major legal case and saw its social
capital and stock price plummet as a result. The loss of public trust and its resulting damage to
the organization’s health created an urgent need for change. Big Pharma was forced to make a
change in its governance practices due to that incident and is now seen as setting the standard in
their industry for transparency of decision-making.
No other company in this study started on its CSR journey with a crisis to generate
energy for change. Big Food, Iron Man, and Big Tech all slowly built energy around change over
time. As society evolved and began expecting more accountability from companies for being
socially responsible, these companies’ efforts expanded from being primarily philanthropy-based
programs to changing their business models to accommodate sustainability and social equity.
Their energy for change came from both internal (employee and investor) and external (society
and marketplace) pressures. For Big Numbers, their journey was driven mostly by external
market factors. Recognizing a trend, they did their best to get in front of it by making changes
early in their practices and then applying that learning to consult with others to help them make
similar changes.
Applied Stage 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition
Big Pharma, Big Food, and Iron Man all adopted the centralized guiding coalition
organizational structure for coordinating and advancing CSR efforts at the local level. Each of
these companies gravitated toward a matrixed model of organizational design through trial and
error. While these companies arrived at the centralized coalition/localized implementation over
time, newer companies in the CSR playfield might consider adopting such as structure sooner,
rather than waiting to see what develops over time.
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Applied Stage 3: Developing a Vision and Strategy
This is a stage of change management that all the companies involved in this study did as
part of their adoption of the CSR strategy. Each one created new mission and values statements
that directly demonstrated its commitment to CSR as fundamental to who they are as a company.
Creating this vision and embedding it into strategy was an early step toward redesigning their
organizations.
Applied Stage 4: Communicating the Change Vision
All the organizations participating in this study paid attention to the details of
communicating vision. Big Pharma, with its crisis-management challenge, paid particular
attention as it was trying to build its brand back up. Big Pharma reminded its people of the CSR
mission and then enlisted them in the day-to-day work of making that vision a reality.
All these companies communicated and reinforced their CSR vision and mission through
their stated missions and values. Progress made toward living their stated values is captured in
annual ESG reports to stakeholders. Big Numbers mentioned that these measurements were tied
to their individual objectives and key results, so individual progress toward organizational CSR
goals was overtly stated and clear.
Applied Stage 5: Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
Big Food and Iron Man utilized their local leaders to make the CSR mission come alive
at every level of the organization. Each local “change champion” was trained in both
communicating the vision and enabling action at the local level. While local efforts are aligned
with a central coalition, there was an emphasis on this being a two-way relationship in that local
leaders would have the ears of those in the central coalition and influence with continuously
revising strategy.
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Applied Stage 6: Generating Short-Term Wins
All the companies mentioned building on short-term success, though each company’s
pace of change was different. Big Pharma’s pace was the quickest as it was responding to public
pressure and the marketplace. Big Number’s evolution was also fairly quick as the nature of their
business causes them to often be focused on marketplace factors like customer and investor
expectations. From their own experience making changes toward CSR, they build a consulting
practice to help others. Big Tech and Iron Man built on their wins at a slow and steady pace over
the course of decades. Big Food saw early success when it chose to invest in its supply chain,
though the results were not immediate. Essentially, Big Food saw its suppliers become more
healthy companies by aligning with Big Food’s high expectations of creating a sustainable
product. These changes confirmed their strategy of investing was working and gave their guiding
coalition the validation it needed to celebrate its success and continue its vision for change.
Applied Stage 7: Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
As each company interviewed for this research saw its investment in being socially
responsible produce changes, the benefits to stakeholders throughout their ecosystems became
real and tangible. Big Tech found that coordinating philanthropic giving and other community
enrichment efforts, such as campus recruiting, brought more impactful results for both the
business and the community than their previous “peanut butter” approach of giving to a wide
variety of organizations. They used this improvement to advance future coordination within their
CSR-oriented functions. Essentially, a change in operations produced more changes in
operations.

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Applied Stage 8: Anchoring the New Approaches in Corporate Culture
When Big Food’s investments in its supply chain began yielding its intended results, the
underlying principle of “mutuality” that guided this strategy became part of the stated values of
the company. Big Pharma recognized that trust was central to its business success and after
having a public-relations nightmare where its reputation suffered from being seen as
untrustworthy, it had to make big changes. Emma at Big Pharma says its commitment to being
trustworthy is “reiterated in just about every executive presentation.” Additionally, All the
companies interviewed for this study demonstrate they have anchored their CSR efforts in their
culture through their ESG reporting.
Lesson Learned 10: Develop a Stakeholder Strategic Business Perspective for CSR
This final lesson learned goes beyond Lesson Learned 5, as it is focused on these
companies adopting a “win-win” perspective as a primary approach for operating their business.
Where Lesson Learned 5 specifically focused on investing in strategic partnerships so that CSR
values may be aligned, this lesson looks more broadly at how a stakeholder perspective might
affect all aspects of the business ecosystem, which may or may not require investment. It
requires developing a systems perspective on the business environment.
As a signatory of the UNGC, each of the companies featured in this research was a well-
established leader in the field of sustainability. The approach these organizations took toward
becoming sustainable organizations was ecological. They had to examine the ecosystem that
their organization was in and look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and make each part
of their business truly sustainable.
Big Food has long recognized this interdependency and demonstrates this understanding
by including “mutuality” as part of its “5-guiding principles.” These are principles that the
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company uses to guide its decision-making. To commit to making decisions based on mutuality
means that each decision is made with the good of all those involved in mind. They are
intentionally focused on creating a “win-win” business environment where each part of its
ecosystem can thrive, customers, employees, suppliers, and communities alike.
Big Pharma also recognizes that to achieve its organizational imperative to be
trustworthy, it must also be looking out for the good of all those they are involved with. It cannot
create drugs or therapies that cause harm, so it must look at the entirety of its business, including
the context in which it operates to be sure all parts of it are trustworthy. If some part is deemed
questionable, the business strategy is like Big Food’s, it just looks for ways to help those
questionable areas be more trustworthy.
Big Numbers have developed an entire consulting practice around helping their clients
improve their ESG ratings. As part of this practice, they are confident they are delivering their
services via sustainable means, while also looking for ways to make their clients more
sustainable. They must examine both their ecosystem as well as their clients’ ecosystems often
finding areas that require focused attention or additional investment. Once the appropriate
changes have taken place, each player involved is in a “win-win” arrangement and both sides
benefit.
Deidre at Iron Man makes it clear that this stakeholder mentality is not purely altruistic.
She said,
If we’re honest with ourselves, we didn’t [get into the recycling business] because it was
better for the environment. It was because it was better economically. We’ve figured out
that we can enable carbon reduction for our customers by continuing to increase our
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recycling. There’s this idea of a win-win associated with it. We had the ability to increase
our business along the way, as well as enabling our customers to reduce.
She went on to describe this as “stakeholder capitalism,” and saw it as the new normal
operating paradigm for businesses in general and her business in particular.
Summary
This study sought to examine companies across a variety of industries who shared a
commitment to CSR in order to capture lessons learned about how they successfully embedded
CSR into the fabric of their organizations. Eight interviews were conducted with leaders from
five companies with long-term commitments to the UNGC. From these interviews, 10 lessons
learned emerged:
• CSR strategy needs to be led from the top which ensures the needed support for the
effort.
• Actively encourage shifting mindsets reiterates the shift toward more of a stakeholder
business approach.
• Incorporate CSR into mission and value statements which is an essential early step on
the journey toward becoming a socially responsible organization.
• Align C-suite with local leaders suggests a matrixed organizational structure.
• Enable stakeholders to adopt CSR values builds CSR values into the broader business
ecosystem.
• Measure and recognize progress to emphasizes the idea that success more easily
grows on the back of other success.
• Invest in people development points to the importance of identifying and promoting
CSR competencies.
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• Be publicly accountable is designed to ensure integrity and accountability through
broadly communicating measures of impact and success.
• Organizational change practices enable organizational design focuses on the idea that
organizational change models may help implement the organizational design.
• Develop a stakeholder strategic business perspective describes how a stakeholder
business perspective can enable the embedding of CSR into business practices.
Chapter Five will provide a discussion of these lessons learned, present recommendations
for companies early in their CSR journey based on these lessons learned, explore the limitations
and delimitations of the research, and offer thoughts on potential areas for additional research.
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Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations
The purpose of the present study was to examine the evolution of the organizational
design of companies that have successfully embedded CSR into their business, identify lessons
learned from their experiences, and then make recommendations for how other organizations can
make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. Five socially responsible organizations across
a variety of industries were examined to identify common factors contributing to these
organizations’ collective success. This chapter begins with a general discussion of findings
followed by three sets of recommendations. Recommendations based on the lessons learned are
then presented for how other organizations can make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily.
The recommendations are presented in three groupings. The first grouping of recommendations
contains those that lay the groundwork for the successful adoption of a CSR strategy. The second
grouping of recommendations is related to how to increase the adoption of the CSR strategy.
And the third grouping of recommendations is for keeping the commitment to CSR going by
measuring and sharing results. Then an overview of the limitations and delimitations of this
study is shared. Finally, potential avenues for future research are explored.
Discussion of Findings
Most of the lessons learned are consistent with what is found in the literature. In
particular, “CSR strategy must be led from the top,” “incorporate CSR into mission and values
statements,” “align C-suite with local leaders,” “Measure and recognize progress,” and “be
publicly accountable” support much of the literature related to embedding CSR into businesses
(Kuisma, 2017; Serafeim, 2020; Urip, 2010; Weber & Wasieleski, 2018; Wickert & Risi, 2019).
These findings, while not necessarily a surprise, do validate previous research. It is easy to
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imagine that these lessons learned are already on the to-do list of companies just beginning their
CSR journey.
It might be expected since the organizations that participated in this study had an
established record of CSR, these findings would be consistent with what is found in the
literature. These successful organizations did, intentionally or not, what the literature
recommends. It may be that companies with less successful CSR initiatives fail to incorporate
the key principles outlined in the literature and reviewed in Chapter Two of this dissertation.
The idea of “enabling partners to adopt CSR value” is also consistent with other research
(Mohrman & Lawler, 2014) where it is called out as a mark of an organization that has
established itself as committed to CSR. Given the companies targeted for this study have very
mature CSR journeys, this finding could also be expected. Enabling others to be socially
responsible is very much in line with the mission and values these organizations possess. While
the finding of enabling partners to adopt CSR value is an example of one aspect of stakeholder
capitalism, it is specifically targeted toward the business partner/supplier relationship. Another
finding (Lesson 10: Develop a Strategic Stakeholder Business Perspective) looks at the business
ecosystem more broadly.
Another finding that is indicative of mature CSR organizations includes investing in
people development. A company that is just beginning on its CSR journey would likely not have
this an immediate to-do as other things would need to be in place to do it. It would not be
effective to invest in developing people’s skill sets without first having identified clear
organizational priorities as these priorities dictate what needs to be done and thus, what skills are
needed to do these things.
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In the current workplace environment of 2022, society is just coming out of the COVID-
19 pandemic, and employers are finding themselves short-staffed and competing for workers.
Many companies are finding they need to offer monetary incentives like higher pay or sign-on
bonus’ to attract prospective employees. Other non-monetary incentives for prospective
employees include the ability to work from home or the opportunity to grow one’s career.
Investing in people development is already top-of-mind for most businesses. Since many of
today’s workers are interested in working for organizations with a higher purpose than just
making money, socially responsible companies may have a competitive advantage in
recruitment. Those companies that are interested in adopting a CSR business model may attract
these conscientious workers by leveraging the opportunity for these candidates to develop the
skills needed to advance socially responsible business.
Actively encouraging shifting mindsets from a sense that CSR is a nice thing to do to an
understanding that CSR is a part of the organization’s identity is implied in some CSR literature,
but not necessarily called out as an actionable to-do. Mohrman and Lawler (2014) among others
discussed the importance and challenge of adopting a stakeholder mindset vs a shareholder,
which is similar, but not quite the same. This lesson learning is more closely aligned with change
management literature (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Kotter, 1996) which supports the idea that clarity
on purpose and mission is key to making changes happen. Since this lesson learned is related to
the changing mission of the organization it may not have been called out specifically in previous
research. Instead, it may have been seen as an ancillary outcome of other to-dos rather than a
unique recommendation or action step.
The finding that organizational change practices enable organizational design” is based
on the observation that these organizations applied the Kotter model organically. This
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observation can be seen as a validation of Kotter’s change management framework as its
principles or steps occurred in the field naturally. One could also see this point as a
recommendation for organizations to apply Kotter’s framework intentionally as a means of
accelerating the adoption of the ethos required to be a socially responsible organization. Much of
the literature on organizational design mirror this finding (Galbraith, 1977; Kesler & Kates,
2010; Mohrman & Lawler, 2014) in that some steps for increasing the adoption of a new design
or strategy may be mentioned, but none take a stance on employing a specific change model for
the adoption process.
While the lesson learned related to applying the organizational change model to
implementing organizational design is focused on Kotter (1996), it may also be applied to other
change models. Further study would be needed to see if the journeys these organizations made
for adopting their CSR align well with other change models such as ADKAR (Hiatt, 2006),
Burke-Litwin (Burke & Litwin, 1992), or Bridges (2009). Since many change models share
common steps, it is possible this would be true.
Developing a strategic stakeholder business perspective for CSR is broader than enabling
partners to adopt CSR values. As mentioned earlier, this lesson learned is concerned with
creating a positive business relationship will all parts of the business ecosystem and is not
specifically focused on just investing in others. While investment might be one strategy for
stakeholder engagement, a broader business perspective will consider a host of other options as
well. The key to a strategic stakeholder perspective is developing a systems view of the
marketplace.
The idea that stakeholder capitalism is an effective operating basis for enabling CSR is
supported by the literature. Stordalen et al. (2013), Kuisma (2017), and Latapí Agudelo et al.
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(2019) are just a few examples of scholars and researchers recognizing the stakeholder
capitalism economic model over shareholder capitalism (Friedman, 1970) as more effective for
applying a socially responsible ethos. If more businesses begin to operate with the stakeholder
perspective, it will represent a fundamental shift in the way business is conducted over the world.
It would mean moving from a solely competitive version of capitalism to one that begins with
the concept of mutual benefit.
The concept of seeking mutual benefit through stakeholder capitalism plays out well
when one considers the issue of climate change since climate change is a subject that affects us
all. There is a recognition from everyone committed to sustainability that since we all share the
same planet, we are in this together. One group’s sustainability goals will not make a difference
unless every group works together toward a common set of goals. The establishment of these
goals through the UNGC helps create this alignment across businesses.
Recommendations
In this section, recommendations based on the lessons learned are then presented for how
other organizations can make the shift to a CSR commitment more easily. The recommendations
are presented in three groupings. The first grouping of recommendations contains those that lay
the groundwork for the successful adoption of a CSR strategy. The second grouping of
recommendations is related to how to increase the adoption of the CSR strategy. And the third
grouping of recommendations is for keeping the commitment to CSR going by measuring and
sharing results.
Recommendations for Laying the Groundwork for Success
Strategy refers to the overall approach the business takes toward accomplishing its
mission. Strategy is recognized as the starting point in the organizational design process as all
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other components flow from and align with it. The strategy names the purpose of the
organization. It defines the business objectives, its reasons for existing, and its definitions of
success. The strategy sets the goals and the tone for how those goals may be accomplished.
For those companies dedicated to operating in a socially responsible manner, senior
leaders were driving CSR strategy from the top of the organization. The CSR commitment
clearly stated socially responsible values and the business was guided by a belief that the
business will be “doing well by doing good” (Chernev & Blair, 2015), meaning they recognized
their profitability is enhanced by being socially responsible. At its core, being socially
responsible was seen as making efforts to ensure sustainability for both the ecosystem of the
business and the business itself.
Recommendation 1: Create a Guiding Coalition at the Top of the Organization to Determine
and Implement a Strategy
Another lesson learned related to implementing a CSR strategy was to be sure that the
leadership at the top of the organization was committed to CSR as a fundamental part of all work
the organization does. The board, the CEO, and the senior leadership team must be aligned and
firmly committed to CSR as being an integral part of their success. It follows then that a second
recommendation for designing an organization with CSR as central to its strategy would be to
have influential top leadership as part of the guiding coalition that would lead the strategic effort.
Kotter (1996) described a guiding coalition as a key group of sponsors of organizational
change. The best-case scenario for leading and sponsoring a strategic effort for embedding CSR
into strategy would set up a central guiding coalition consisting of the CEO, Chief Sustainability
Officer or equivalent, local leadership representatives who will help drive the change, and any
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other key stakeholder within the business (Gratton, 2000). The guiding coalition ideally
represents a diverse set of viewpoints that hold a certain degree of social influence.
One of the lessons learned from this study, aligning C-suite with local leaders, certainly
would apply to the creation of a guiding coalition. It also may be the beginning of setting up a
matrixed organizational structure for implementation and accountability. More on guiding
coalition will follow in the next set of recommendations.
Recommendation 2: Establish a Guiding Coalition Early
Interestingly, privately held companies such as Iron Man and Big Food, seemed to have a
much easier time setting and communicating the CSR strategy than the publicly traded
companies. All the privately held companies had their CSR and sustainability efforts originally
driven by the CEO and their boards. Iron Man’s origins were from India where the law dictates
that 2% of all profits go toward CSR philanthropy (Jain et al., 2021). Big Tech and Big Food
started similarly as well, though they were family-owned US-based companies whose owners
felt a strong obligation toward their communities. Though Big Tech is now a public company, it
has maintained its’ founders’ CSR vision and commitment. Perhaps, having the guiding coalition
created early at the top of the organization was a factor that streamlined the adoption of CSR.
For public companies, the drivers to make the change to CSR were much more tied to
rising societal expectations. The advent of ESG ratings on their prospectus reaffirmed their
choice to respond to societal pressures and further reinforced and validated their sustainability
strategy. For an emerging CSR company, it is easy to recommend they have the board and C-
suite leading the CSR strategy and communications as they begin their journey.

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Recommendation 3: Incorporate CSR Into Mission and Value Statements
This recommendation flows directly from the lesson learned with the same title. It is also
recommended by much of the literature related to CSR (Kuisma, 2017; Serafeim, G., 2020; Urip,
2010; Weber & Wasieleski, 2018; Wickert & Risi, 2019). The socially responsible idea of
“doing what is right for all” was embedded into the culture of every corporation participating in
this study. As if to embody the effectiveness of this recommendation, most of those interviewed
named their organization’s guiding principles or values from memory at some point in their
interview. These statements should be used to guide the rest of the organizational design,
deepening the business’ pledge to CSR principles, and ensuring key actions that reinforce the
CSR ethos stay a priority.
Recommendations for How to Increase the Adoption of the CSR Strategy
It was found that those successful CSR organizations applied change management
principles organically as part of the implementation of their CSR strategy. This section presents
recommendations that build on these organizations’ intuitive success. By applying these change
management ideas intentionally, emerging CSR organizations can ease the adoption of the new
organizational strategy.
Recommendation 4: Identify and Leverage Where the Energy for Change Is Coming From
This scenario happened in one of the companies in this study, Big Pharma. The company
lost a major legal case and saw its social capital and stock price plummet as a result. The loss of
public trust and its resulting damage to the organization’s health created an urgent need for
change. As Winston Churchill famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Big Pharma did
exactly that as they made changes due to that incident and are now seen as setting the standard in
their industry for transparency of decision-making.
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A crisis, while useful for building energy quickly for change, is not always necessary.
You can build urgency by laying out an honest, convincing, vision for the change. A company
just getting started on its CSR commitment, might do well to examine where the energy for this
change is coming from and how it might leverage the energy intentionally to drive the CSR
effort. This potential company might highlight both internal and external pressures and share
how these are affecting business outcomes. It might also begin to build communications that
highlight CSR as a path toward potential solutions to these organizational pains.
Recommendation 5: Seek Ideas for CSR
Involving employees in contributing to the strategy of CSR, the how of implementation,
can be mutually beneficial to the organization and its stakeholders. Once employees are involved
in the problem-solving of doing business while being socially responsible, new ideas may be
generated along with increased ownership of the overall effort. Seeking ideas from employees at
the local level before implementation can help an organization adopt its CSR strategy more
easily.
Beyond employees, empowering suppliers, and other parts of the business ecosystem to
adopt CSR principles was another keyway the organizations in this study unwittingly followed
this change management concept. Big Food’s investments in their socially responsible supply
chain were a means of empowering local ownership and enabling the change to stick. The more
these CSR changes are owned by front-line people and processes, the more likely they are to
stick and have a consistent impact.
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Recommendation 6: Focus on Competencies Needed for Implementing Changes Related to
CSR
The people interviewed for this study identified several competencies they saw as
essential for accomplishing the CSR strategy. Some of the key competencies mentioned by
participants include having a growth mindset, being a systems thinker, being collaborative,
building trust, listening, and valuing diversity and inclusion. Those interviewed also mentioned
training and coaching as the predominant methods for developing these skills in the workplace.
By focusing on these selected competencies for critical roles related to CSR success, the
organization can ensure it has the skills and abilities to meet its goals. These competencies
should be incorporated into the hiring practices by first including them in job descriptions and
recruitment materials. Then, employing behavioral interviewing techniques focused on
identifying whether a candidate possesses these skills. They can be incorporated into
performance management processes by observing and assessing an employee’s ability to employ
these competencies. Plans for developing these needed skills with existing employees in
particular roles be created and implemented on an ongoing basis. Determining the level of
support the people in the organization may need to perform their roles most effectively is a good
first step. Then assess their current ability to perform at the needed level. Once the gap between
the present and desired future state has been identified, targeted learning programs can be
developed to help bridge that gap. Lastly, these critical competencies can be reinforced through
recognition programs that cite and reward employees for demonstrating these competencies in
the course of their work.
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Recommendations for Maintaining a Commitment to CSR
Essential for making the changes to the CSR business model stick is the recognition and
rewarding progress made toward the organizational CSR goals. This section presents three key
recommendations for measuring and sharing progress toward these goals. Organizations starting
out on their CSR journey might consider how to implement these recommendations as part of
their implementation of organizational strategy.
Recommendation 7: Publish Expectations and Associated Metrics
The recommendation from an organizational design perspective is to be sure everyone in
the organization’s ecosystem is aware of the metrics and is rewarded for their contribution to
them. People should understand how they are being measured and what success looks like from a
personal perspective related to CSR. Metrics can be a means of helping employees understand
how their job contributes to the overall strategy. Much of the recognition of an organization’s
success (or failure) comes from a CSR standpoint comes in the form of ESG, D&I, and
sustainability reports, which are ubiquitous in 2022.
Recommendation 8: Share Gains With Stakeholders
What tangible evidence of CSR producing positive change might be felt by stakeholders?
Identify how CSR has made an impact on each stakeholder group and promote awareness of
those changes. This is first done through standard reporting (ESG, D&I, etc.), but these gains can
be called out during any point of stakeholder contact. What is tangible raises awareness of the
impact and promotes future growth. Seeing the progress made and feeling a sense of
accomplishment is a motivator for people to continue the work. Also, sharing these successes
across stakeholder groups may help build a sense that the whole community is striving toward
the same outcomes.
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Recommendation 9: Celebrate Success
Recognition can enhance motivation and provide an incentive for continuing to make
progress on strategic goals. If people have been recognized and celebrated for their execution of
strategy or their ability to demonstrate their competence in a specific skill needed for CSR to be
achieved, it should be celebrated. Ideally, these contributors should be rewarded either through
promotion, bonus or raise. Being publicly acknowledged through organizational communications
such as a newsletter or internal news reporting is a great way to celebrate. Of course, the
occasional party to commemorate accomplishments can lift spirits as well. Criteria for achieving
these rewards should also be readily available as people need to know what they need to do to
achieve success. Having both success and the path for achievement defined creates the right
conditions for people to succeed.
Limitations and Delimitations
Since this study focused on those companies that have established CSR ethos, any
struggles they may have gone through in their journey to this point were not top-of-mind. As
such, it was difficult for participants to recall the changes they made over time to any of the
components of organizational design. Participants could easily talk from their position as a
committed socially responsible organization and explain the history of their development, but the
particulars of organizational design components seemed too far in the past.
Delimitations around the scope of the study (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) including the
number of people interviewed, and inconsistency in each participant’s levels within their
organizations could potentially impact this study’s validity. While this study did find common
attributes that affect all aspects of organizational design, a larger societal framework may have
led to broader conclusions that might impact the application of socially responsible principles
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during daily business. Finally, while the inclusion of businesses from a variety of industries was
effective in finding general lessons learned, it may have also contributed to missing industry-
specific learnings.
Recommendations for Future Research
From the literature review as well as the interviews conducted for this study, the concept
of stakeholder capitalism stood out as a key operating strategy for businesses in the 21
st
century,
especially as reporting on ESG metrics continues to be a societal expectation (de la Gorce et al.,
2022). More research into stakeholder’s capitalism’ effect on the profitability of these CSR-
oriented companies would provide further data to drive the broader business world’s
commitment to sustainability.
Also related to stakeholder capitalism, more research into mutuality as a guiding business
approach for both profitability and CSR would be needed to provide further validation of its
effectiveness. Methods for how to promote mutuality as a core business practice would be
helpful for organizations considering its benefits. As with any new way of doing business,
capturing the successes of the approach is key to its acceptance in other areas.
Finally, as touched upon earlier in this chapter, a deeper exploration of how these
successful companies managed change might serve to validate additional change models other
than Kotter’s (1996). How did these companies’ journeys mirror the ADKAR (Hiatt, 2006)
model of organizational change, for instance? What about other models? A lot of change
management models share common steps, so there is a possibility that the steps these
organizations naturally took on their CSR journeys would also be seen as aligned or
complementary to an assortment of change models.
86

Conclusion
The findings of this study are consistent with what is known about organizational design
(Galbraith, 1977; Kesler & Kates, 2010; Mohrman & Lawler, 2014; Mohrman & Shani, 2011).
Having CSR embedded as a clear part of organizational strategy at the top of the organization is
what enables it to be filtered through the rest of the business. It is that commitment from the top,
the CEO or the board level, that drives the successful implementation of a socially responsible
mindset. Also, having local leaders present and advance the CSR cause seems to be a consistent
recommendation.
It was not expected that organizations would naturally follow Kotter’s (1996) eight stages
of change as part of their implementation of strategies. The fact that they did so organically is a
validation of Kotter’s change model. It also serves as a strong recommendation to businesses
with an emerging CSR ethos to examine their change process to better align with the Kotter
model. The intentional use of the model might streamline organizational changes toward
embedding CSR into their work.
In a world where climate change is affecting our lives more and more every year it is
easy to be overwhelmed by thinking about the work that needs to be done to fix it. To date,
political gridlock at the federal level of the government in the United States has led to few
substantive changes to policies or regulations that can make the kind of impact on climate
change at a global level that is needed. But this study has shown that there are reasons for hope.
Those reasons include seeing more and more businesses fill in the gap left by the government
and align their business practices to make a real difference to sustainability that benefits us all;
the movement toward ESG reporting in both the United States and Europe as a means of holding
87

these businesses accountable; and finally, seeing capitalism itself shift from a shareholder
perspective to a stakeholder perspective. The world just might make it after all.

88

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Appendix A: Interview Protocol
● How long have you worked for this organization?
● How would you describe your role at the company?
● How would you describe your role in CSR at the company?
● Tell me about how your organization started on its CSR journey?
• What were the primary drivers for adopting CSR?
• Who was involved? What were the roles and responsibilities of various
stakeholders?
• How did you manage to align these key stakeholders?
• What got in the way of that alignment?
● What were the main challenges you faced in adopting a CSR strategy?
● What significant changes had to be made in the organization that helped make
significant progress toward embedding CSR in the business?
• How did you go about making these significant changes?
• Can you walk me through one of the changes you needed to make and how
you went about doing that?
● What was the strategy that guided your CSR organizational structure?
• How did it relate to the overall business strategy?
● What structures did you put in place to facilitate CSR at your company?
• What are the roles/responsibilities that were established?
● In what ways did you work to build the knowledge and skills required to implement
CSR?
● What specific processes were affected by adopting a CSR strategy?
99

● How did you reward progress made along the way?
● How would you say you measure success for your CSR effort?
● To what extent, if at all, has the focus on CSR forced changes in the organizational
design over time?
• How often does your organization review its strategy?
• How often have you updated your strategy concerning CSR?
• What else needed to be changed based on these updates?
● What would have made the adoption of CSR practices easier?
● What advice would you have for a company just starting on its CSR journey?
• What would you advise this company to do related to its organizational
design?
• What structural changes should this company immediately consider?
• What process would you recommend they look at more closely?
• What should they be promoting amongst their people (skills development,
attitudes, behaviors)?
• What should they be measuring as they take on CSR as an organization?

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Creator Grivas, Christopher (author)

Core Title Organizational design for embedding corporate social responsibility

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 09/21/2022

Defense Date 08/23/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag climate change,corporate social responsibility,ESG,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational change,organizational design,stakeholder capitalism,sustainability

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