Instrumental, Strategic and Political Conception of Corporate Social Responsibility

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature defines instrumental, strategic and political approaches to CSR. The strategic approach to CSR in transnational corporations goes beyond the customer orientated short time issue management, persuasion and financial performance, but emphasizes a long time perspective based on planned, implemented and evaluated projects to create business value. The research in this paper focuses on the corporate communication directors conception of corporate social responsibility. Participants from transnational and Turkish national corporations have been interviewed and qualitatively analysed. Thefindingsshowthatallinterviewedparticipantsare enthusiastic about the concept of social responsibility. They define CSR as the “raison d'etre of the company” or “the sine qua non of sustainability is social responsibility”. Two of three Turkish national corporations’ CSR conception can be defined as a stage between instrumental and strategic, because CSR in these corporations is more customer orientated with limited or short time influence at the one side, but also implemented for sustainability and to create business value on the other side. The CSR perspective of a Turkish national company based on a farmers union established half a century in order to serve the interests of the local community and stimulate development is clearly political. The conception of sustainability and responsiveness to stakeholders was inherent in the establishment of this particular firm. We conclude that there is a remarkable agreement between the CSR directors’ perspective and the firm’s organizational behaviour and that the cases follow the classification described in the literature to some extent.


Introduction
There is no clear-cut and concrete definition of CSR as CSR contains almost everything of public concern. Everyone has his or her own answer to and understanding of CSR (Tench, Sun & Jones, 2012: p. 6). The European Commission (2001) regards CSR as "a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis". This definition comprises the economic, social, environmental, stakeholder and voluntariness dimensions of CSR developed through a content analysis of existing CSR definitions by Dahlsrud (2008).
According to Bhattacharyya (2010: p. 82) doing corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities today is becoming a necessity for business organizations rather than just remaining a choice. In the business environment of Turkey, there is a confusion over the definition of CSR which reflects itself on the practices of CSR. However, on the part of the business community, a strong incentive for efforts developing business and society is observed. The sponsorship activities as well as social projects organized with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are among those efforts (Göcenoğlu & Onan, 2008: p. 3).
Familyfoundationsacceptdonationsonlyfromfamilycontrolledbusinessesandindividualfamilym embers. Groupcompaniesallocate a percentage of theirprofits to thefoundation, for redistribution to socialprojects (Ararat, 2008: p. 277). Corporate social responsibility refers to a variety of charitable activities, taking initiatives predominantly in areas like education and health, but also guiding women to business life, making acommodation facilities for street children and animals. Despitetherichtradition of foundations, legal often reversible. Aktivities do not require major resources, procedural or structural modifications and are not idiosyncratic to the firm. Therefore these actions can be easily imitated by competitors and their competitive advantage can be quickly erode (Bansal et al, 2015: p. 70).If CSR continues to be seen as nothing more than corporate philanthropy, all CSR applications might be considered as marketing tools with short-term advancesgenerally far away from strategic CSR with long term targets (Orhaner&Doğan, 2010: p. 15,44).
For example, donating a small percentage of profits to charities or supporting special purpose NGOs can be planned and executedquickly. Corporations can even decide to initiate new donations within the last few weeks of year inorder to report an appealing achievement to the media and through its annual CSR report (Bansal et al, 2015: p. 70 to arts initiatives. This indicates that many companies support arts with small dollar amounts. Companies on average direct the highest proportion of their grants (28%) to education (K-12 and Higher), followed closely by health and social services (27%).It is noted that corporate charitable contributions are used quickly to remedy a negative business image, caused in environmental and social areas (Chen et al, 2008). Short-time CSR practices are easily communicable to the public. However, they are not necessarily in the focus of the companies' activities and are often the first to be cancelled in times of economic crisis. They start and end with a fixed goal and budgetand do not influence the company as a whole (Martinuzzi & Krumay, 2013: p. 430).

Strategic CSR
Strategic CSR activities go beyond the common understanding of instrumental CSR. The strategic view of CSR is defined as corporate social activities that require long time horizons, large resource commitments, and significant adjustments to organizational structures (Bansal et al, 2015: p. 70). 'Rethink your business' is the motto of strategic CSR (Martinuzzi&Krumay, 2013: p. 434).To help the corporation towards achieving its mission and vision it should be proactive and planned, be long term in perspective and require sacrifice of substantial amount of resources. Otherwise it is unlike any serious business activity (Bhattacharyya, 2010: pp. 90-92). The ideal company has a wide scale of CSR tools Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 7 -Issue: 1 January -2017 that are efficiently integrated into the organization's competitive strategy to create long-term business value (Mäkinen & Kourula, 2012: p. 661). According to Bansal et al (2015: p. 70), implementing strategic CSR in governance, labor practices and decent work, workforce diversity, human rights, health and safety, environmental issues, product responsibility, affects a firm's core competences, requiring important changes to organizational structure.
Once introduced and implemented, strategic initiatives such as environmental and social management systems or corporate governance practices, tend to have a long-lasting effect on the coporations' evolutionary trajectory and cannot be easily reversed. Due to thecomplexity and significance of these activities and regular interactions with stakeholders (Bansal et al, 2015: p. 70), strategic CSR is seen as an opportunity to create shared value (Martinuzzi & Kumray, 2013: p. 425). In doing this, strategic CSR(with inside out and outside in dimensions) moves beyond good corporate citizenship and mitigating harmful value chain impacts to mount a small number of initiatives whose social and business benefits are large and distinctive (Porter & Kramer, 2006: p. 10). Strategic CSR includes mission and vision statements (Lantos, 2001), and targets stakeholders, especially consumers, employees, and marketers. The aim is to include environment and society in strategic decisions and to open up an innovative potential. Processes must be adopted, employees have to be informed about the strategy, and a certain commitment to CSR is required. Therefore, the materiality is high.There are certain risks when integrating CSR into strategy, such as losing the position achieved in the market or upsetting business partners (Martinuzzi & Kumray, 2013: pp. 433-434).

Political CSR
According to Schereret al. (2014) globalization calls for a fresh view concerning the political role of business in society and its contribution to social innovations and the public good.
They argue that these phenomena need to be embedded in a new concept of the business firm as an economic and political actor in market societies and as an actor that contributes to both private and public interests (Scherer et al., 2014: p. 148).
Despite Friedman (1970), Levitt (1958) and others arguments that the role of the business is to make profit and that it's the government's obligation to provide for all kinds of individual the economy, dealing with transnational social and environmental problems, providing public goods (education, public health, and infrastructure), administering citizenship rights, it does not serve the public interest (Matten & Crane, 2005, Schereret al., 2014. Corporations and NGO's often step in and fill the governance void and take responsibility for issues of public concern (Teegenet al., 2004) in taking over certain functions with regard to the protection, facilitation and enabling of citizen's social, civil and political rightsformerly an expectation placed solely on the government (Matten & Crane, 2005).These are not necessarily made manifest in national laws but in several regulatory standards developed by the Global Reporting Initiative, the UN Global Compact, ISO 14000 series or the Social Accountability 8000 for CSR reporting. These initiatives contribute to public health, education, social security, and the protection of human rights, or engage in self-regulation to fill the gaps in legal regulation and to promote societal peace and stability (Matten & Crane, 2005

Methodology
This study examines corporate communication or corporate social responsibility directors qualitative attitudes about their CSR conceptions and there role in CSR. For this empirical data was collected by using a qualitative research method in taking a cross sectoral case based approach with six industries. These sectors were computer hardware, low voltage electric installations, retailer, food and agriculture, drinks and beverages, and insulation materials. Table 2 demonstrates the corporations' strategic position, industry, label and gender of the participants.
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 7 -Issue: 1 January -2017  These key themes were also used as a guide structure to define the practitioners' practices and roles. So the interviews based around a common set of questions like the CSR functions positionwithin the corporation, the factors that determine the firm's CSR understanding and policies, the role for public relations efforts in CSR, role of the primary stakeholder for CSR campaigns, the role for NGOs in corporations CSR policies, and the tools used for the communication of CSR practices.

Corporations and theirCSR Definition
The lack of a widely accepted CSR definition remains a significant challenge for theorizing and defining CSR. In defining CSR, participantsexpressed their companies enthusiasm for

CSR and Philanthropy
Participants clarified their understanding of CSR.They differentiated CSR from philanthropy by being modern, being the organizations' responsibility for the society and by being measurable. Exemplary quotations from the interviews are set out in Table II. A male media and public relations director in his 50's from a Turkish cooperative said that, "social responsibility embraces the whole society, but philanthropy is about the personal contributions of individuals" (4).

CSR policies and the Role of NGOs
All participants agree on the importance of collaboration with NGOs. The main reason is that NGO's provide a network through which companies can reach people and groups. This is important not only for the proper and effective distribution of the goods or services produced by the CSR campaign but also for the publicity of the projects and the corporations. informed about your project through the media and contacts you" (C5).

By means of NGOs, we enter a network of relations. We take part in certain platforms
where we can establish face-to-face relations. These relations help us to discover new ideas and come across with valuable partners. The relations we breed also serves as a channel for feedback on our CSR programs.
A participant from the national corporation (C5) states that they utilize all communication means to share CSR information with their employees as internal stakeholders. For external stakeholders, they use traditional media primarily. They organize press trips to the cities, run their projects and arrange press conferences and special interviews.

Conclusion
During the past decades corporate social responsibility has evolved rapidly as stakeholders have become more organized and powerful in affecting the way corporations do business.
This could be attributed to factors like globalization, fast access to information and sustainability. Key stakeholders now have much more knowledge available through the internet and social media tools, they can be more informed about the companies whose products they purchase or services they use. It is also well kown that corporations who perform CSR enhance reputation, save costs, improve innovation, build effective relationships with key stakeholders. This research focuses on the CSR directors or managers' conception of CSR in transnational and Turkish national corporations within the terminology of instrumental, strategic and political CSR.
The findings of this study show that among the participants there is a strong commitment to corporate responsibility. At the conceptual level CSR is explained as the sine qua non of sustainability or the raison d'etre of the company, which is managed at the operational level in implemeting several economic, social and environmental progams to several stakeholders. with audiences and to provide information directly to individuals without having to pass through the gatekeepers of the news media. Another important channel for communicating CSR activities are social responsibility reports. Transnational corporations use these reports to communicate theCSR activities and initiatives with particular interest groups. It should be mentioned that in Turkey, social responsibility reports are still limited in quantity and quality.
Companies do not report their CSR activities because of the lack of interest from their stakeholders in reporting and also companies are unfamiliar with reporting their CSR activities as they prepare their financial reporting. That's why CSR reporting should be promoted in Turkey by different channels like the government, the media, or the NGO's (Orhaner & Dogan, 2010:p. 48). Turkey, as a developing country, should increase social Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 7 -Issue: 1 January -2017 responsibility reporting to maintain and enhance the economic success in terms of responsibility, transparency and accountability (Hoştut & Deren Van Het Hof, 2015: p. 131 (Leisinger, 2011: p. 4).
It represents a voluntary and discretionary manifestation of CSR that differs in kind from the obligatory conformance with economic, legal, or ethical dimensions of CSR (Carroll, 1979).
This nature of philanthropic activity (doing good above and beyond what is expected) maylead to imputations of exemplary, as opposed to merelygood, behavior (Wood & Logsdon, 2002;Godfrey, 2005: p. 778 Partnerships between business and NGOs in the pursuit of CSR have become increasingly prevalent in recent years (Poret, 2014: p. 20 promote and design CSR standards as well as management and reporting processes, and participate in CSR monitoring and auditing (Poret, 2014: pp. 15-16). The findings of this investigation show that in the CSR context, corporations agree on the importance of the collaboration with NGOs especially for their stakeholder dialogue. The reason for this is, NGO's provide the network and the information through which companies can reach localpeople and groups. This is important not only for the proper and effective distribution of the services produced by the CSR campaign but also for the publicity of the projects.
Clark (2000) argues that public relations and CSR have similarities, which provide clues to their integration and increased joint effectiveness. Both disciplines are seeking to enhance the quality of the relationship of an organization among key stakeholder groups and both disciplines recognize that to do so makes good business sense (Clark, 2000: p. 376 Turkish national corporations' conception can be defined as a stage between instrumental and strategic, because CSR in these corporations is more customer orientated with limited or short Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 7 -Issue: 1 January -2017 time influence at the one side, but also implemented for sustainability and to create business value on the other side. A Turkish national farmers cooperatives' consideration can be defined as political CSR. The corporation was established in 1952 and consists of 60 thousand partners and 900 thousand farmers with the aim of setting up the needs of the community and the economic development. Politcal CSR comprises issues of public concern with long time perspectives, adjustable resources, and innovative policies. The corporation cooperates with stakholders and the CSR strategy is integrated in the corporations identity to create shared value. It can be concludedthat in thebeginningcorporationsmaychoose to start with limited resources, defensive policies and short time perspective as it is described in instrumental CSR first and then expand their conception on more formal and strategic or political CSRover time.
Finally, the size and the mangement structure of a corporation affects the conception of CSR.
So, it is found that beside transnational corporations also large Turkish national corporations implemet formal CSR strategies. The interviews indicate that the differences in conceptions of CSR within the terminology of instrumental, strategic and political are useful. These conceptions were easily observable and operational not only in transnationals but as well as in national corporations. Along with large corporations, the role of small and medium enterprises (SME) is also crucial for Turkey which constitute 99.9% of all corporations. In order to understand the dynamics of CSR in SME's, the CSR conceptions, definitions, strategies and implementations of SME's are particularly important.