An Exploration of Developments of Corporate Social Responsibility Samuel Olusegun Idowu July 2017 Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Prior Output Supervisors: Professors: Jillian Farquhar and Chizu Nakajima London Metropolitan University Guildhall School of Business & Law 84 Moorgate London EC2M 6SQ United Kingdom
Student s Declaration: I, Samuel Olusegun Idowu, declare that this thesis is my original work and it has never been submitted to any academic institution for any academic award. Where excerpts are other scholars efforts, due acknowledgements and citations have been credited to them. Additionally, all but one of the papers used in the thesis are my sole research studies. I was the lead author of the only paper I published in collaboration with another individual and did the majority of the work on the motivations for disclosing CSR information by corporate entities in the UK. Signed: Samuel O Idowu, MSc, DMS, FCIS, FRSA
Acknowledgements Table of Contents i Abstract 1 1. Introduction 3 2. Overview of the Research Agenda and Summary of the Submitted Papers 10 2.1 Paper 1 Idowu, S O and Papasolomou, I (2007) 2.2 Paper 2 Idowu, S O (2009) 2.3 Paper 3 Idowu, S O (2010) 2.4 Paper 4 Idowu, S O (2011a) 2.5 Paper 5 Idowu, S O (2011b) 2.6 Paper 6 Idowu, S O (2012) 3. Summary of Approaches and Perspectives 31 4. The Research Contribution 40 5. Concluding Reflections 49 6. References 62 7. Appendix I S O Idowu, Curriculum Vitae 72 8. Appendix II - Autobiographical Background 81 9. Appendix III Citations 86 Paper 1 Paper 2 Paper 3 Paper 4 Paper 5 Paper 6
List of Tables Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 4.1 Submission s Main Research Questions Twelve Participating UK Public Limited Companies as at the time of the study Differences in companies reporting practices by UK companies Some Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Main Differences between Positivism and Phenomenology Summary of the Research Methodology Summary of the reasons for reporting on CSR Table 4.2 Comparing one Furniture Manufacturing Co s production costs before and after implementing a Cleaner Production Scheme Table 5.1 Researcher s List of Current Projects with Estimated Publication Year List of Figures Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 4.1 Players in the field of CSR in the UK A Three Dimensional inter-relationship Some Landmark Events in the History of CSR in the UK Carroll s pyramid of CSR How the Papers link together with CSR Figure 5.1 The UN Eight Millennium Development Goals 2000 2015
Acknowledgements I am grateful to a number of people who have been responsible in helping me to bring this submission to this very final stage. I cannot forget Professor Jillian Farquhar for her confidence and great words of inspiration to me when I met her at the Hub on the third floor of our Moorgate campus in March 2015. Her powerful report about all that has been accomplished by me in CSR sets in motion the admission process for the degree. Professor Stephen J Perkins who has been instrumental in supporting a number of the outputs that culminated into what others have described as an outstanding profile in CSR equally deserves a mention. The Dean authorised my fee waiver for the degree, for which I will remain grateful for ever. Professor Chizu Nakajima my original outstanding and unassuming supervisor deserves a gold medal for her willingness to meet with me even when many things appeared uncertain, I was well guided by one of the best in supervising higher degrees in the UK today before her departure from London Metropolitan University. Professor Nakajima s supervisory role was inherited by Professor Farquhar, I believe that both these my supervisors have impacted in me all I need to successfully guide others through the same process in the future. I look forward to paying back this debt to others. I am also grateful for Dr Frances Tomlinson s support throughout the process. There are also a number of reputable scholars outside London Metropolitan University I have been fortunate to know through my international network who deserve to be acknowledged in this submission. I am grateful to my friend and mentor Professor Nick Capaldi, Loyola University, New Orleans, USA who I have known for nearly a decade and has been an inspiration to me in this sector, where I have worked for nearly three decades. I am also grateful to a number of friends and colleagues who I have been fortunate to know and interact with in the field of CSR globally, Liangrong Zu, Rene Schmidpeter, Stephen Vertigans, Kojo Menyah deserve to be mentioned here, many of them have either expressly or impliedly encouraged me to embark on this life changing activity for a period of time. I am grateful to Professor David Crowther (formerly a colleague at London Metropolitan University; who left for De Montfort University, Leicester where he retired a few years ago) who resuscitated CSR in my life with the 2003 International CSR Conference at London Metropolitan University, without that conference it is possible that all I went on to achieve in the field of CSR might never have seen the light of the day. My wife (Olufunmilola Sarah O Idowu) and children (Josiah O Idowu and Hannah A Idowu) have been most outstanding, understanding and very supportive of me in many respects for record purposes my children - Josiah is six years old and his sister Hannah is five years old at the time of putting the submission together. I will forever be grateful to the three of you for everything you have helped me to accomplish in my teaching career and other life activities since you all became part of my life. For ever I shall remain indebted to these three great human beings who I have been fortunate to call members of my family. My publisher for nearly a decade, Springer of Germany also deserves a mention in this submission for their confidence in all I have done and continue to do in the field of CSR. I am particularly grateful to Dr Martina Bihn (Editorial Director at Springer), Dr Niels Peter Thomas, Christian Rauscher (Executive Editor), Barbara Bethke and lately Matthew Smyllie who are all based at Springer in Heidelberg, Germany and Samuel Beattie who is based in Springer s London office. They too have been fantastic to me and they are the heroines and heroes of everything that
eventually became part of the literature on CSR globally through what I was fortunate to champion. During the time of putting this submission together Springer s International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility was launched and I was appointed by Springer as one of the two Editors-in-Chief of the Open Access Journal. In addition during the same period, one of my edited books won the 2016 Most Outstanding Business Reference Book of the American Library Association (ALA) in Boston, USA. I was also chosen as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Responsible Management in Emerging Economies an Inderscience Journal and during the period of carrying out my corrections I was appointed the Editor-in-Chief, of the American Journal of Economics and Business Administration (AJEBA). All these great achievements are really not my own but they are two organisations Springer Publishing and London Metropolitan University (my employer for nearly two decades) which I have been fortunate to be associated with during what I often refer to as the satisfying period of my career. I am extremely grateful to everyone whose names I have mentioned above and those whose names I have not necessarily mentioned in these acknowledgements but who also deserve my thank you. As it often happens in life, most end products come to successful conclusion as a result of several people s hard work, commitments, inspiration, encouragement and support; the end product which has emanated from six of my past CSR activities is no exception. I therefore wish to express my profound gratitude and deepest thank you to every one of you through this section of the submission, thank you all.