IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trn/utwpde/0813.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A theoretical analysis of the relationship between social capital and corporate social responsibility: concepts and definitions

Author

Listed:
  • Lorenzo Sacconi
  • Giacomo Degli Antoni

Abstract

The paper studies the relationship between social capital (SC) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by investigating the idea of a virtuous circle, between the level of SC and the implementation of CSR practices, that fosters socio-economic development by generating social inclusion and social networks based on trust and trustworthiness. Following the literature on SC that stresses its multidimensional character, both a cognitive and a structural idea of SC are considered. The first one essentially refers to the dispositional characters of agents that affect their propensity to behave in different ways. The latter refers to social networks connecting agents. With regard to the concept of CSR, a contractarian approach is adopted and CSR is considered as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm�s stakeholders. Among stakeholders, a original distinction between �strong� and �weak� stakeholders is introduced. The key element that allows to distinguish between strong and weak stakeholders concerns the consequences that the break in the relationship with the firm produces both on the stakeholder and on the firm. Both these two categories have made specific investments in the firm. However, strong stakeholders are precious for the firm because they bring in strategic assets. On the contrary, weak stakeholders do not bring strategic assets into the firm and firms have material incentives at defecting in the relationship with them. Considering the notions of cognitive and structural SC, a contractarian approach to CSR and the distinction between weak and strong stakeholders, the paper shows that: a) the level of cognitive SC plays a key role in inducing the firm to adopt and observe CSR practices that respect all the stakeholders; b) the decision of adopting formal instruments of CSR contributes to create cognitive SC that is endogenously determined in the model; c) the level of cognitive SC and the decision of adopting CSR practices creates structural SC in terms of a long term relationship between the firm and the weak and strong stakeholders.

Suggested Citation

  • Lorenzo Sacconi & Giacomo Degli Antoni, 2008. "A theoretical analysis of the relationship between social capital and corporate social responsibility: concepts and definitions," Department of Economics Working Papers 0813, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    • Handle: RePEc:trn:utwpde:0813
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unitn.it/files/13_08_degli_antoni.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gianluca Grimalda & Lorenzo Sacconi, 2002. "The Constitution of the Nonprofit Enterprise: Ideals, Conformism and Reciprocity," LIUC Papers in Ethics, Law and Economics 115, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    2. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817, Decembrie.
    3. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2006. "A Social Contract Account for CSR as an Extended Model of Corporate Governance (I): Rational Bargaining and Justification," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 259-281, October.
    4. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2004. "Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a model of "extended" corporate governance. an explanation based on the economic theories of social contract, reputation and reciprocal conformism," LIUC Papers in Ethics, Law and Economics 142, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    5. Gianluca Grimalda & Lorenzo Sacconi, 2005. "The Constitution of the Not-For-Profit Organisation: Reciprocal Conformity to Morality," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 249-276, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jayashankar, Priyanka & Ashta, Arvind & Rasmussen, Mark, 2015. "Slow money in an age of fiduciary capitalism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 322-329.
    2. Fabio Sabatini & Francesco Sarracino, 2014. "E-participation: Social Capital and the Internet," Working Papers 2014.81, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    3. Giacomo Degli Antoni & Fabio Sabatini, 2013. "Disentangling the relationship between nonprofit and social capital: the role of social cooperatives and social welfare associations in the development of networks of strong and weak ties," Econometica Working Papers wp48, Econometica.
    4. Fabio Sabatini & Francesca Modena & Ermanno Tortia, 2014. "Do cooperative enterprises create social trust?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 621-641, March.
    5. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2011. "A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (III): Conformism, Equilibrium Refinement and Selection," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Lorenzo Sacconi & Giacomo Degli Antoni (ed.), Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Behaviour and Performance, chapter 2, pages 42-79, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Fabio Sabatini & Francesco Sarracino, 2019. "Online Social Networks and Trust," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 229-260, February.
    7. Fabio Sabatini & Francesco Sarracino, 2013. "Will Facebook save or destroy social capital? An empirical investigation into the effect of online interactions on trust and networks," Department of Economics University of Siena 692, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    8. Mei Peng Low, 2016. "Corporate Social Responsibility and the Evolution of Internal Corporate Social Responsibility in 21st CenturyOrganization Performance: A Case Study of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority," Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Management Studies, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 3(1), pages 56-74.
    9. Cornett, Marcia Millon & Minnick, Kristina & Schorno, Patrick J. & Tehranian, Hassan, 2021. "Bank consumer relations and social capital," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    10. Filippi, Maryline, 2021. "Do French agrifood co-ops have a head start in Corporate Social Responsibility? An initial examination of French co-ops and their practices," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 101(4), January.
    11. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2011. "Multi-stakeholder governance for effectively sharing social responsibility 1 (social contracts, deliberative democracy and endogenous conformity)," Econometica Working Papers wp26, Econometica.
    12. Riillo, Cesare Fabio Antonio & Sarracino, Francesco, 2014. "Motivations for Corporate Social Responsibility: all talk and no walk?," MPRA Paper 60211, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Liliya Nedkova Nedevа, 2021. "Social Capital Management In Municipality Enterprises," Economy & Business Journal, International Scientific Publications, Bulgaria, vol. 15(1), pages 364-373.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giacomo Degli Antoni & Lorenzo Sacconi, 2010. "Modeling Cognitive Social Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as Preconditions for Sustainable Networks of Relations," Econometica Working Papers wp19, Econometica.
    2. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2007. "A Social Contract Account for CSR as an Extended Model of Corporate Governance (II): Compliance, Reputation and Reciprocity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 77-96, September.
    3. Magali Fia & Lorenzo Sacconi, 2019. "Justice and Corporate Governance: New Insights from Rawlsian Social Contract and Sen’s Capabilities Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(4), pages 937-960, December.
    4. Silvia Sacchetti & Carlo Borzaga, 2021. "The foundations of the “public organisation”: governance failure and the problem of external effects," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 25(3), pages 731-758, September.
    5. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2011. "A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (Part I): the Multi-stakeholder Model of Corporate Governance," International Economic Association Series, in: Lorenzo Sacconi & Margaret Blair & R. Edward Freeman & Alessandro Vercelli (ed.), Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance, chapter 7, pages 157-193, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Giuseppe Danese & Luigi Mittone, 2015. "Trust and trustworthiness in experimental organizations," CEEL Working Papers 1501, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    7. Giorgia Nigri & Mara Del Baldo & Armando Agulini, 2020. "Governance and accountability models in Italian certified benefit corporations," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(5), pages 2368-2380, September.
    8. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2013. "Ethics, economic organization and the social contract," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2013. "The economics of corporate social responsibility," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise, chapter 38, pages 372-399, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Samuel Mansell, 2013. "Shareholder Theory and Kant’s ‘Duty of Beneficence’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 583-599, October.
    11. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2011. "A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (III): Conformism, Equilibrium Refinement and Selection," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Lorenzo Sacconi & Giacomo Degli Antoni (ed.), Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Behaviour and Performance, chapter 2, pages 42-79, Palgrave Macmillan.
    12. Juan Pineiro-Chousa & Marcos Vizcaíno-González & M. Ángeles López-Cabarcos, 2016. "Reputation, Game Theory and Entrepreneurial Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-13, November.
    13. Pineiro-Chousa, Juan & Vizcaíno-González, Marcos, 2016. "A quantum derivation of a reputational risk premium," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 304-309.
    14. Giacomo Degli Antoni & Marco Faillo & Lorenzo Sacconi & Pedro Francés-Gomez, 2016. "Distributive Justice with Production and the Social Contract. An Experimental study," Econometica Working Papers wp60, Econometica.
    15. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2011. "Multi-stakeholder governance for effectively sharing social responsibility 1 (social contracts, deliberative democracy and endogenous conformity)," Econometica Working Papers wp26, Econometica.
    16. Alessandro Zattoni, 2011. "Who Should Control a Corporation? Toward a Contingency Stakeholder Model for Allocating Ownership Rights," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 103(2), pages 255-274, October.
    17. Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Sacconi, Lorenzo, 2013. "Social responsibility, activism and boycotting in a firm–stakeholders network of games with players’ conformist preferences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 216-226.
    18. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2012. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance," Econometica Working Papers wp38, Econometica.
    19. Lorenzo Sacconi & Marco Faillo, 2005. "Conformity and reciprocity in the "exclusion game": an experimental investigation," Department of Economics Working Papers 0512, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    20. Norimichi Matsueda & Jun’Ichi Miki, 2017. "Contracting-Out Of Household Waste Collection Services In Japan," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 65(02), pages 443-455, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social capital; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social network; Ideal utility; Cooperation; Trust.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:trn:utwpde:0813. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Luciano Andreozzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detreit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.