Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation is essential reading for both professors and business students interested in the evolving landscape of CSR within our consumption-driven economy. This book delves deep into the historical context of CSR, highlighting its challenges while offering a structured framework anchored in stakeholder theory. Moving beyond conventional perspectives on CSR, it presents a pragmatic insight into the intricate global landscape, emphasizing the need for large multinational corporations to adopt market-based CSR solutions.

I have used Professor Chandler's Strategic CSR (4th, 5th, and 6th editions) in some of my undergraduate courses. In the current semester my MBA students and I are having the great pleasure of learning a lot from reading and discussing various topics, concepts, theories, and analytical frameworks introduced in the 6th edition of Strategic CSR. Students have told me nothing but positive things about the book. In particular, students said that the book is extremely engaging, thought-provoking, easy to read, and most importantly (for them) can be applied in the workplace.One of their assignments is to elaborate a concept or theory in the textbook in an oral presentation by discussing a real-world example involving a for-profit, non-profit or a public organization implicated in an issue. This assignment also requires students to demonstrate a thorough stakeholder analysis by applying the "Seven Steps of Stakeholder Management" framework described in Chapter 3. All the students, after completing this assignment, have praised this framework as a novel approach – it is novel for them because they have not done this kind of analysis before – to examine an issue differently. I think that they have a positive impression on this book partially because they are challenged to consider the names and faces of stakeholders affecting or being affected when analyzing an issue, as opposed to analyzing the issue at the surface level. I agree with my students 100 percent as I myself have felt the same way when I was preparing to teach this framework.Since 2017 I have reviewed a number of better-known Business and Society textbooks, and used some of them in my CSR courses. I find Chandler's book most engaging among all of them because he has perfected the ability to integrate various CSR perspectives into what he labels "Strategic CSR." I think this is an approach quite different from other textbooks which tend to focus on "summarizing" different perspectives. In other words, when you read his book, you will feel as if he is telling you a story (or his perspective), rather than telling you what others have said about CSR. When I reviewed and used his 5th edition two years ago, I was really impressed by his story-telling skills, but have been even more fascinated by the 6th edition which is updated with new events, examples, cases.Many students – both undergraduate and graduate students – said the book is easy to read. I think that the 6th edition reads more smoothly than previous editions because it is most logically organized. The book is divided into six parts. It starts with explaining what corporate social responsibility is, followed by a comprehensive discussion about the five perspectives (stakeholder, legal, behavioral, strategic, and sustainable) of the intellectual framework underpinning Strategic CSR. In particular, I appreciate the comprehensive discussions on corporate rights and responsibilities (Chapter 5) and Who Owns the Firm (Chapter 6), both of which I believe students should know in great detail given the recent expansion of corporate rights. I think that those of you who are interested in covering corporate governance topics will find "A BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE" quite compelling because this book is one of the few that speak to them from the CSR lens. For those of you who teach strategy and sustainable business topics, this book shows us how CSR can be weaved through those topics.I love this book in itself and think everyone who is teaching CSR or ESG should have a copy! I am serious! At the same time, I have found the instructor support materials that come with the textbook extremely useful as well. Sage has done a great job of making test bank questions, powerpoint slides, and other supplementary online materials available to instructors. I also think it is thoughtful of Professor Chandler to write and email newsletters on a twice-weekly basis to users of this book, whether students or instructors.