Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the context of four differing national institutional arrangements for welfare. An analysis is presented on howself-reported CSR differs in content across two western welfare states (the UK and Sweden) and two emerging economies in southern Africa (South Africa and Mauritius).

Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a qualitative content analysis of the CSR self-reporting of 40 companies. This involved 10 of the largest companies incorporated in four countries, namely, Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Mauritius. The content is categorised into communityinvolvement, socially responsible production and socially responsible employee relations. For each category, an analysis is provided of the reported issues (the question of what), the geographic focus of reported issues (the question of where) and ways of working with these issues (the question of how), aswell as the extent of reporting and level of reporting (the question of how much).

Findings – The study shows that companies place focus on aspects, issues and localities in ways that differ between countries and can be understood in relation to current institutional arrangements for welfare. The content of self-reported CSR can be both complementing and mirroring the welfarearrangements. Differences in self-reported CSR agendas are particularly evident between the two western welfare states on the one hand and the two emerging economies on the other, as these represent two distinct contexts in terms of welfare arrangements.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to research on the institutional embeddedness of CSR in three ways: first, by going beyond measures of country differences in terms of extent of CSR to consider differences in CSR content; second, by focusing on the social aspects of CSR and placingthese differences in relation to welfare configurations; and third, by contributing with empirical findings on how CSR content differs across national settings and across the established/emerging economy divide.

‘Corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘socially responsible investment’ (SRI) have become predominant frameworks connecting business to society that have spread across the globe. They comprise a shared set of ideas and practices, such as those promoted in global reporting standards and by international organisations such as the UN Global Compact. Nonetheless, both are constructed and reproduced by companies in relation to context-specific social institutions, including norms and conventions shaping company engagement in social issues. Using a neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, the thesis examines constructions of social responsibility in discourse and within institutional contexts, across regions that are not often compared in the research terrain: two West European welfare states (Sweden and the UK) and two emerging African economies (South Africa and Mauritius). The purpose of the thesis is to add to the literature on CSR and SRI with a sociologically informed perspective that is comparative and connects institutional theory with social constructionism and a Foucauldian perspective on power. The thesis analyses how perceptions of CSR and SRI are constructed in relation to the social institutions that encase companies’ engagement with social issues, such as national level welfare configurations and the institution of financial investments. The main argument in this thesis is that CSR and SRI need to be seen as contextually constructed, in discourse and practice, in ways that draw the boundaries and set the conditions for company engagement with social issues.

The thesis comprises three articles. Article 1 is a content analysis of company self-reporting on CSR and the article examines how the content given to CSR relates to broader welfare configurations and as such differs in four national settings across the divide between emerging African economies and Western welfare states. Article 2 is a discourse analysis that examines interpretative repertoires occurring in company self-reporting across the same set of four countries. The interpretative repertoires are analysed as discursive practices where power intersects with the production of knowledge on CSR. Article 3 focuses on SRI and examines responsible investing as a form of institutional work that institutional investors engage in. Based on an interview study with institutional investors in Sweden, the article analyses institutional work as a process that has the effect of both institutional creation and maintenance and it connects these institutional processes to the construction of meaning on SRI. In its entirety the thesis contributes a sociological perspective on how prevailing understandings of corporate social responsibility come into being and are reproduced.

This article examines how companies use discourse in corporate social responsibility (CSR) self-reporting to construct their engagement in social issues. Discourse is examined through the lens of ‘interpretative repertoires’ used in the reporting, which appear as recurrent habitual sets of explanations that are constitutive of CSR’s meanings. Using an innovative perspective that combines discursive institutionalism with Foucault’s notions of knowledge, power and discourse, the article examines how interpretative repertoires are used in self-reporting and how this has social consequences. The contribution to CSR research is both theoretical and empirical. Beginning with the assumption that context is an important aspect of how discourse is constructed, the empirical material includes company self-reporting from two emerging economy contexts (South Africa and Mauritius) and two advanced welfare states (Sweden and the UK). The analysis reveals the ways in which interpretative repertoires reflect how the versions of CSR are anchored in institutional contexts. How these repertoires are constructed also reveals how companies exercise power by constructing the conditions, and setting the boundaries, for company engagement in social issues.

This article presents a case study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in coastal areas of Mauritius where company CSR work has brought new ways of engaging with communities. The study examines in what ways companies are involved in ecosocial work and what the challenges and possibilities are from an environmental justice perspective. Based on interviews with representatives of companies and other organizations involved with CSR the study shows that CSR involvement in ecosocial work may bring possibilities for advancing environmental justice for local communities as it can enhance resources and capacity building, as well as bring actors together and play a role in advocacy and empowerment work. Challenges include that companies may have difficulties in contributing to greater justice in terms of community involvement. Moreover, inequalities and substantial environmental justice issues, such as access to land and safe housing, are difficult to fully address through a CSR framework.

This article examines socially responsible investing (SRI) as a form of institutional work that institutional investors engage in. The lens of institutional work is applied to a qualitative interview study on how institutional investors in Sweden take part in SRI. The article shows that the practice of SRI involves both institutional creation and maintenance, through the creation of new practices as well as the maintenance of the existing institution of financial investments. As argued in the article, this dual institutional process has implications for the meanings given to SRI. By connecting institutional creation and institutional maintenance and linking them to meaning construction, this article contributes to the research on institutional work with an innovative analysis of how a concept is given meaning through the actions of institutional investors such as banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset management companies, as well as the individuals within these organisations. 

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to identify and categorize disclosures from the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Standards (GRI Standards) that have direct or indirect influence on health of external or internal stakeholders.

Methodology: GRI core and comprehensive disclosures (as part of universal standards and topic-specific standards related to economic, environmental and social topics) that can be used by businesses for CSR reporting were grouped as to have direct or indirect influence on external and internal stakeholders’ health.

Findings: The study proposes a systematic way of conceiving GRI standards in terms of direct or indirect influence on the health and well-being of internal and external stakeholders.

Originality/Value: This is the first study that provides a classification of core and comprehensive GRI disclosures that have direct or indirect influence on the health of external or internal stakeholders. This classification will allow businesses to easily report those CSR activities that might be of importance to stakeholders’ health promotion. 

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) used to be seen as a social obligation of businesses to make decisions and take responsible action in accordance with the goals and values of the society. The concept is today understood as the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as the local community and society at large. This study aimed to apply Chowdhury and co-authors’ framework to the Unilever Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Content Index 2020 to explore the feasibility of the framework as well as identify potential challenges related to its use in the field of public health. Findings show that the framework is suitable for analysing CSR reporting on activities aimed to promote internal and external stakeholders’ health and wellbeing from a public health perspective. A greater number of GRI disclosures reported by Unilever related to external stakeholders’ health and wellbeing than to activities impacting internal stakeholders. Further research should aim at testing the framework in other types of business organizations across other types of industries.

Mauritius, which is a Small Island Developing State with low economic resilience and limited capacity to deal with disasters, is currently trying to recover from two major disasters – COVID-19 and an oil spill caused by a shipwreck. This article aims to explore the Mauritian social workers’ perspectives on the disaster governance in relation to these double disasters. Data were collected from 18 social workers using web-based online interview tools in September 2020. An abductive thematic network method based on governance network theory was used to analyse the collected data with the help of the ATLAS.ti software. In the findings, the perspectives of the respondents on the structures and mechanisms for DSW and the factors that affect disaster governance in Mauritius are presented and discussed. This article concludes that there is a lack of organised structures and mechanisms for disaster social work, and there is a need to promote good governance in disaster response in Mauritius.

During the last few years, there has been a growing concern for environmental justice within international social work. This article connects to such concerns and aims to present and discuss environmental injustices faced by local communities in Mauritius, Peru and Sweden. Primary data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a total of 25 key representatives of local communities in the three countries. Secondary materials were combined with the primary data in ATLAS-ti v.8.3 for a deductive critical discourse analysis. The findings describe the substantive, distributive and procedural environmental injustices faced by local communities in the three case studies. The article then considers the implications of the findings for international social work interventions in promoting environmental justice. The article concludes on the need for international social workers to continue their efforts and practices towards achieving environmental justice for all, in promoting global sustainable development.