CSR metrics: Do they point to cultural and competitive determinants that influence technologically driven companies toward or away from Corporate Socially Responsible approaches?

There is a high level of interest and a great deal of debate in the business world whether so called “Corporate Social Responsibility” positively or negatively impacts profitability, competitiveness, and sustainability. This paper examines current practices in measuring Corporate Social Responsibility with several questions in mind about factors that influence technologically driven organizations to either promote or dismiss a multi-stakeholder perspective to social responsibility. These questions include: How do organizational cultural factors influence business philosophy, assumptions, values, behavior, and reward distribution, especially among different but mutual stakeholders? How do cultural factors, including ethics, drive our values and assumptions about legitimate business practices? What differences are common and consistent in companies that operate primarily on bottom line and efficiency metrics as opposed to those who explicitly consider the impact of business operations across the different stakeholders? Can societal non-economic preferences create a “directionality” that provides incentives for a corporation to structure policies and processes that favor sustainability and a positive return to all stakeholders?