Examining HRM and CSR linkages in the context of emerging economies: the Indian experience

Abstract

This chapter explores the links between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and human resource management (HRM) in large business organizations using the strategy implementation perspective. Academic scholarship in the field of CSR has grown since the middle of the twentieth century, yet, CSR implementation continues to remain an under-researched topic in the extant CSR literature. While there was some research on the managerial aspects of CSR in 1970s in the US, it was abandoned by CSR scholars on the grounds of its strong managerial orientation (Arora, 2010). However, as more and more corporations adopt CSR, and civil society and government as stakeholders of businesses are actively encouraging, promoting and lobbying for CSR, there has been a revival of interest in the topic of CSR implementation in the 2000s. In contrast, the field of HRM has witnessed a surge in scholarship on strategic HRM which is seen as a source of competitive advantage for organizations. Drawing on Ulrich’s assertion (Ulrich, 1997) that delivery of strategy depends on the capability of HR people and devolution of HR responsibilities to line managers as a key characteristic of modern HRM (Schuler, 1989; Kirkpatrick et al., 1992; Legge, 2005; Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005), our aim in this chapter is to explore the understudied and rather neglected field of CSR strategy implementation by invoking the field of strategic HRM, in particular the manner in which the devolution of CSR occurs to line managers and across the organization