What matters to managers? : The whats, whys, and hows of corporate social responsibility in a multinational corporation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse how managers in a multinational corporation (MNC) experience corporate social responsibility (CSR); the concept, the reasons for dealing with it, and its integration in everyday practices. Moreover, the paper aims to discuss how the alignment and misalignment of managerial perceptions are likely to affect corporate social performance. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on a case study that includes interviews with ten managers and survey data from 149 manager respondents. Findings – The paper concludes that managerial perceptions of CSR are characterised by a great deal of heterogeneity. It shows that, even in an organisation with a long CSR tradition and formalised CSR policies, standards and procedures, managers hold different, and not necessarily convergent, views of CSR. Originality/value – The results indicate that simple categorisations of firms' CSR activities fail to encompass the multitude of perceptions and viewpoints that actually exist in modern organisations. Moreover, the paper questions whether managerial alignment on CSR issues is a precondition for high corporate social performance.