Corporate Responsibility: Understanding (and Misunderstanding) of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, and Solidarity

The primary purpose of this research is to differentiate the conceptualization of corporate sustainability (CS) from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate solidarity. The objectives are threefold: first, we provide a literature review to show differences in the conceptualizations of the three phenomena and construct a corporate responsibility taxonomy; second, we perform a search of corporations’ annual responsibility reports and websites to investigate and analyse their understandings of CS, CSR, and solidarity, and how they apply these terms in business rhetoric; third, based on data collected from 93 different corporations, we investigate the fit between what our taxonomy of corporate responsibility declares and how corporations conceptualize CS, CSR, and solidarity. The results from this study suggest that there is a high degree of ambiguity as to what constitutes corporate responsibility. We conclude by presenting the implications of this study and suggestions for future research.