Background

The notion of the CSE first emerged in 2002 from a conceptual working paper which was published in the Hull University Business School Research Memoranda Series. In that paper, it was argued that CSR can also be motivated by an altruistic impulse driven by managers‘ personal values, in addition to the more obvious economic and macro political drivers for CSR. This reflected the traditional philosophical and business ethics debate regarding moral agency. This paper was followed by a U.K. conference paper which highlighted the importance of managerial discretion in CSR and was published the next year in the Journal of Business Ethics.

In this latter paper, the concept of “entrepreneurial discretion” as an overlooked antecedent of CSR was mooted.

Consequently, the term corporate social entrepreneur was first coined in a paper that was presented at the 17th Annual European Business Ethics Network Conference, in June 2004. Here, the term Corporate Social Entrepreneur was first defined and differentiated from the different types of entrepreneurs: the regular executive entrepreneur; the entrepreneur; the policy entrepreneur and the public or social entrepreneur. (See also Austin et al., 2006a for a description of the similarities and differences between commercial and social entrepreneurship). Initially, the concept was discussed in relation to managers. However, it was soon widened to include employees at any level of the firm, regardless of their formally appointed status. To be a CSE you do not necessarily have to be a manager. Seniority is not necessary, but, of course, it helps.

Hemingway‘s concept of the CSE emerged as a result of her own personal experience working as a marketing executive in the corporate world and it has also been the subject of some exploratory empirical investigation. It was also inspired by Wood, who had previously referred to “Ethical training, cultural background, preferences…and life experiences…that motivate human behavior”; thereby supporting Trevino‘s conceptual “Interactions” model of ethical decision making in organizations. Trevino’s model included both individual and situational moderators, to combine with the individual‘s stage of cognitive moral development, to produce either ethical or unethical behavior. And whilst studies existed regarding the activities of environmental champions at work or other change leaders, none of these studies specifically examined the role of employees’ personal values in entrepreneurial discretion with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Thus, the connection between philosophical ideas of moral character as an influence for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and linked to the psychological notion of prosaically behavior, provides a different focus from the more commonly discussed structural drivers for CSR, i.e., business strategy in the form of public relations activity; encouragement from government or organizational context.

CSE integrates and builds on the foregoing concepts and has been defined by Austin, Leonard, Reficco, and Wei-Skillern (2006) as “the process of extending the firm’s domain of competence and corresponding opportunity set through innovative leveraging of resources, both within and outside its direct control, aimed at the simultaneous creation of economic and social value.” The fundamental purpose of CSE is to accelerate companies’ organizational transformation into more powerful generators of societal betterment. Carroll (2006) provided a rich historical account of the evolution over the last fifty years of businesses’ approach to societal responsibilities. Over the past two decades, the traditional concept and practice of corporate philanthropy has undergone a significant evolution into Corporate Social Responsibility with a variety of labels, such as corporate citizenship, triple bottom line, and strategic philanthropy.

CSE aims to provide an approach that will accelerate the CSR journey. It is not another form of CSR but rather process for invigorating and advancing the development of CSR. The analysis that follows is based first on an in-depth qualitative study of two companies that were considered to be pioneers in the practice of CSE: The Timberland Company, maker of outdoor apparel and accessories, and Starbucks Coffee, a prominent specialty coffee company. These studies were supplemented with a review of practices of dozens of other companies.