The power of CSR: how business managers can hold office without election

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Andreia Filipa Borges
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/15098
• topic: CSR; Political CSR; Corporate political activity; Political legitimacy; Psicologia social; Responsabilidade social das empresas; Atividade política; Análise corporativa; Responsabilidade política

Following many scandals and corruption cases among political class, business managers have been emerging as potential political actors, with a perceived ability to participate in political decision-making processes, which affects a determined community. Previous research has been considering engagement in CSR as a political strategy adopted by organizations, resulting on a new concept linked to this idea: Political CSR. More specifically, the Habermasian perspective of political CSR assumes that organizations engage in these practices in order to obtain political legitimacy, i.e., the right to be obeyed. Based on a sample of 220 participants, this study aims to provide a quantitative measure of political CSR, which is lacking in the literature, regarding the Habermasian perspective. In this sense, this study tests the extent to which engagement in CSR practices reflects on business managers’ political legitimacy. It also seeks to know if attributed business managers’ political skill affects CSR engagement and individual political legitimacy. Results show that engagement in specific CSR practices, namely towards community members plus nature and volunteering issues, as well as towards organizations’ employees, build business managers’ political legitimacy. Additionally, business managers’ political skill plays an important role since it facilitates the adoption of an effective political strategy, in this case, CSR.