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Managing corporate responsibility globally and locally: Lessons from a CR leader

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Dana Brown  and
Jette Steen Knudsen
Jette Steen Knudsen
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
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Abstract

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Corporate Responsibility (CR) is today an essential component of corporate global strategy. CR can bolster the institutional context for market expansion fill institutional voids or facilitate market entry as a component of non-market strategy. Yet, in fulfilling these functions, CR may need to be highly sensitive to local contexts. How can transnational firms organize CR so as to maximize efficiencies from globalization and to minimize the fragmentation of corporate organizational cultures? provide a framework for analyzing the way that corporations coordinate global and local functions. We build on this framework in a case study of Novo Nordisk and its approach to determining global and local CR policies and procedures with regard to its China and US subsidiaries. Our findings suggest that it is important for companies to define a common set of organizational norms. In addition, CR need to be sensitive to local institutional contexts, but learning from subsidiary experience is important and lends itself to standardization and replication of initiatives across market contexts.

Type
Corporate Responsibility, Multinational Corporations, and Nation States
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 14 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Corporate Responsibility, Multinational Corporations, and Nation States , October 2012 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2012 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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