Using structural complexity to explain decision-making on corporate responsibility

Abstract

Intra-organizational factors are an important line of inquiry to improve the explanation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) behavior in current theory and management concepts.

Contributions from organizational behavior literature were used in this thesis to orient the analysis to the company’s structure in order to provide alternative explanations as to ‘why’ and ‘how’ companies addressed social responsibility issues and activities. Qualitative methods were employed to investigate the structure/decision relationship among a sample of decision processes of multinational business organizations. Conclusions suggest that social responsibility issues and activities can be treated contextually by the company, and its complexity can influence and shape the development of alternatives to address the issues and activities.