CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
CRRC 2020
15th Corporate Responsibility Research Conference
Theme: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Does it Make a Difference? Hosted by Homerton College, University of Cambridge (UK), in association with the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds (UK)
and Kedge Business School (France)
3rd-4th September 2020
(PhD workshop on afternoon of the 2nd September)
Submission Deadline: May 15, 2020
The theme of the conference, "Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Does it Make a Difference?" invites participants to explore the contributions that CSR makes to society. CSR has been adopted by most corporations to the point that it has become an institutional imperative for business firms. Accordingly, numerous academic researchers have shown that corporations use their CSR in order to improve their legitimacy and reputation and that CSR does, overall, contribute to the financial performance of corporations. However, from a society's perspective, what is the end result of CSR? Does CSR help anybody? How much? Whom? These are all questions that have not been adequately addressed in the academic literature investigating CSR.
Therefore, in this conference, we call for papers that investigate the impact of CSR on society. Acknowledging a broad range of possible issues, we call for papers that may address, but are not limited to the following questions and topics: How can we rethink the impact of CSR from a societal perspective? How do corporations contribute to sustainability challenges? What impact does CSR has on the economic development of emerging and developing countries? How does CSR contribute to the climate change challenge that we are facing? Under what conditions is CSR just "talk"? How can corporations improve the societal impact that their CSR activities have? How can we better measure this impact?
This is a cross-disciplinary conference looking for both conceptual and empirical papers filling the research and knowledge gap in both theory and practice related to the impact of CSR on society. We are interested in contributions from different disciplines and fields of study. CRRC is the ideal place to test new ideas and to experiment with new formats. Therefore, we welcome suggestions for special workshop streams and innovative ideas. The tradition of CRRC is to focus on participants and the debate, as well as on social activity. We aim to create an environment that is welcoming and friendly yet succeeds in challenging the existing knowledge base and assumptions, and hence drives the debate around corporate responsibility forward.