Evaluating ‘Honesty’ When Implementing Corporate Community Initiatives: A Developing Country Perspective

Purpose — This study explores organizational ‘honesty’ when implementing corporate community initiatives (CCIs) with a particular focus on those community projects which are carried out in developing countries.Design/methodology/approach — This exploratory chapter adopts a qualitative case study approach and uses both primary and secondary data.Findings — The exploratory examination of organizational ‘honesty’ in relation to the ‘motives, decision-making and outcomes’ when implementing CCIs, provides unique findings which indicate the multi-faceted nature of organizational motives, the engagement of salient stakeholders in CCIs’ implementation and the underlying economic nature of the expected outcomes from the initiatives which are largely considered to be socially progressive. Framework consisting of four evaluative criteria is proposed as a possible evaluative framework to examine organizational ‘honesty’ in the implementation of CCIs.Research limitations — Although this study provides an initial explorative perspective of the debate on organizational ‘honesty’ in corporate social responsibility (CSR), it is limited by its scope and generalizability of the findings as it was based only on three cases.Originality/value — The chapter provides a unique and internal perspective of the manifestation of organizational ‘honesty’ in the implementation of CCIs. It shows that determining such ‘honesty’ within CCIs is complex and requires an in-depth assessment of a range of evaluative criteria.