Beyond The Business Case and Sustainable chain management: Why Do We Need to Build a Theory of Interfirm Social Responsability?

Abstract

The purpose of the present article is to demonstrate the necessity of focusing on interfirm interactions when analysing the rise of socially responsible practices. The first section highlights problems with the standard business case’s explanations for the connection between economic and socio-environmental performance, highlighting the limitations of this approach’s firm-centric reasoning. A similar critique is offered as regards studies that focus on green/sustainable supply chains – simply bringing suppliers into the analysis adds to the range of actors being covered but does little to identify existing gaps in the literature. Section 3 uses the example of the automotive industry to show how the inconsistency between corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse and practice becomes clear when interfirm interactions are taken into account. The conclusion suggests that achieving real progress in the development of socially responsible practices requires the construction of a theory of interfirm social responsibility based on an institutionalist framework.