The strategic management of Corporate Social Responsibility: systems to lead and control it in a dynamic view

The objective of this study has been to construct a theoretical framework aiming at analyzing the elements of the strategic control system of CSR and trying to explain what are the reasons that lead companies to integrate social responsibility in strategic management systems and the implications of this integration on the level of social performances. The approach to social problems is strategic; this does not mean underestimating, in the social dimension, normative issues and values. The success of the company, related to the achievement of economic, competitive and social aims, is linked, in fact, although at different levels, both to an ethical and value dimension, and to a strategic dimension. The choice of a strategic approach, rather than create a confrontation over an ethical approach, is useful to outline an approach to nonoperational analysis in the social dimension of the company. In this work, with the purpose of defining the model of analysis for strategic control of CSR, it is used a systemic approach. The development of the model and the formulation of the main propositions on which the same model is based require: the identification and analysis of the antecedents (context factors) that are the basis for a company of the assumption of its responsibility and its CSR orientation; the identification and analysis of the elements that make up the strategic control system of CSR; the analysis of the consequences (social performance); the analysis of cause-effect relationships