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This paper aims to highlight the links among standardization, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and critical management. It also aims at understanding the implication of the normalization process for CSR but also questions the nature of this concept.

To determine the interest in standardization, we forecasted the trend in issuing ISO certificates based on autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Holt statistical models. Then a critical approach is used to understand the nature of CSR.

The paper focuses on a critical approach and challenge the definition of CSR through the lenses of standardization. It shows that the notion of CSR is polysemic and highlights the limits of standardization process.

The research is only based on ISO standards, not other kind of standardization process.

The paper questions the notion of CSR and shows the different elements that this notion covers.

The paper questions the role of standardization and its impact on CSR adopting a critical view.

The topics of the social and environmental responsibility for the companies, deontological rules, codes of control and ethical charters, exercise of the voting rights to the service of the durable development, choices of investment of the funds, ethical placements are more and more often discussed. The companies and their stakeholders, the investors and the managers financial feel increasingly concerned by these questions. As a result more and more literature can be found on those subjects and more specifically on the strategy developed by firms to implement social responsibility. The perception that companies have of their social responsibility as well as the action plans that they initiate in this field can be analyzed using panoply of semantic tools. Based on four institutional communications produced by the companies themselves, we will determine beyond what is said, what the corporate world really says about social responsibility. The alternative use of two types of tools will enable us to reveal, beyond simple expression, the way in which these organizations conceive their social role: ‐ the interactional view and the relational analysis, as developed by the Palo Alto Group ‐ metaphorical analysis, according to the principal metaphorical families characterized by Morgan (1983)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms build and develop corporate discourse in the field of corporate social responsibility (CRS). The paper has two main objectives: to clarify notions that are used when analyzing discourse; and to provide a qualitative methodology to analyze how the discourse is used to construct a CRS strategy.

The paper presents a qualitative methodology, deconstructing four CRS reports using a story‐telling approach.

The analysis shows that firms construct their environment while marketing the report on social responsibility, in order to make of it an asset in an institutional communication system.

Further attention should be devoted to the specificity of qualitative approach and to discourse analysis (selection of the corpus, validity and triangulation, etc.).

The paper shows how discourse can be used to provide competitive advantage. It also provides a clear framework while using discourse analysis and identifies the major pitfalls that should be avoided when using such a methodology.

The notion of professionalism is polysemic in nature. This paper aims at analysing the development of this notion and identifying its components. The paper examines the process that leads to the development of professionalism based on the interaction between the actors and the organization. These social interactions, grounded in an organizational environment, reveal the tensions that such interactions expose.

This paper draws on qualitative methodology using semi‐directive interviews and provides an example of application.

This paper focuses on how professionalism can be developed, generating acts, implementing actions, and using resources.

This paper presents one example in a specific field and should be put in perspective with other examples and fields.

This paper clarifies the notion of professionalism and identifies specific elements that have to be taken into account when developing it.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the convergence of the social reporting guidelines available in Italy.

The research is based on a documentary analysis of four selected social reporting guidelines provided by Italian institutions or translated in Italian.

The results of the analysis point out that it is possible to identify an isomorphic convergence among the guidelines, though differences remain relevant and express peculiar institutional expectations on the behaviours of different typologies of organizations.

The study is limited to Italian social reporting guidelines; however, it provides a methodology which could be applied in different contexts.

This study identifies the leading and primary issues in social reporting practices across different sectorial and methodological schemes.

The convergence of social reporting guidelines has a twofold implication: on one hand, social accountability is plastic issue, adaptable to different organization sectors and typologies; on the other, a common codification and commodification of social accountability is emerging.

The article proposes a cross-sectorial analysis of social reporting methodologies, to identify analogies, differences and trends of institutionalization and standardization of this process.

The aim of this paper is to identify difficulties and tension fields encountered in a Social Accountability (SA) 8000 certification process. The paper is based on a case study within a multinational small–medium enterprise (SME) during the implementation of a SA8000 standard.

In the framework of the case study, we adopt a cognitivist approach and use cognitive maps to describe and analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) representations of the main actors of the certification process: the owner-manager of the SME and the certification manager. We collected additional information on the case company through document analysis, additional interviews, validation interviews, confrontation interviews and follow-up interviews after one year.

The analysis of cognitive maps revealed tension fields and difficulties linked to the different representations of social responsibility between the social accountability standard SA8000 and the owner-manager strategic vision. It also underlines the sensemaking role of the certification manager in the certification process.

Limitations of the research are the explorative character of an illustrative case study and the limits of the construction of cognitive maps. The cognitive perspective brings new insights into the certification process and into the interaction between middle and top management.

Implementing a CSR standard necessitates a cognitive change of individual representationsto integrate CSR standardized criteria in the complex, idiosyncratic and systemic representations of the main actors.

The case study shows clearly the tensions existing between the CSR representation based on a social standard and the CSR representation of SME owner-managers.

Cognitive mapping has been often used to analyze and to discuss strategic vision of SME owner-managers, but rarely in the field of CSR. The confrontation of two maps and the complementary analysis of the case study context bring additional perspectives on implementation difficulties.

This paper aims to open a dialogue between academic accounts of the subprime crisis and The Life of Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare.

Andre Orlean’s analysis of the crisis published in 2009 is closely examined to trace the ways in which it echoes this seventeenth-century play on issues of debt, gift, trust and belief.

Shakespeare’s play provides an astonishingly relevant description that can account for and provide a new reading of most of Orlean’s (2009) detailed and in-depth academic analysis.

Following the chronology of a literary piece, this article opens a dialogue with the academic literature to allow for gaining a particular perspective, namely, beyond specific elements, the underlying dynamics of the subprime crisis are sadly classic in terms of trust and beliefs. As we will see, Shakespeare had already seen everything […].

The objective of this paper is to address the question whether and how firms can follow a standard management process to cope with emerging corporate social responsibility (CSR) challenges? Both researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to the question because of the rapidly evolving CSR expectations of stakeholders and the limited diffusion of CSR standardization. The question was addressed by developing a theoretical framework to explain how dynamic capabilities can contribute to effective CSR management.

Based on 64 world-leading companies’ contemporary CSR reports, we carried out a large-scale content analysis to identify and examine the common organizational processes involved in CSR management and the dynamic capabilities underpinning those management processes.

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective, we demonstrate how the deployment of three dynamic capabilities for CSR management, namely, scanning, sensing and reconfiguration capabilities can help firms to meet emerging CSR requirements by following a set of common management processes. The findings demonstrate that what is more important in CSR standardization is the identification and development of the underlying dynamic capabilities and the related organizational processes and routines, rather than the detailed operational activities.

Our study is an early attempt to examine the fundamental organizational capabilities and processes involved in CSR management from the dynamic capabilities perspective. Our research findings contribute to CSR standardization literature by providing a new theoretical perspective to better understand the capabilities enabling common CSR management processes.