IAMO researchers receive Emerald Literati Award

04 December 2020 - For their paper on “CSR as hypocrisy avoidance: a conceptual framework”, Johanna Jauernig and Vladislav Valentinov received Emerald’s Highly Commended Paper Award 2020. The article was published in the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal in 2019.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) holds the potential for solving societal problems. However, CSR actions sometimes fall short of CSR communication leading to an erosion of credibility, charges of corporate hypocrisy and public skepticism about CSR initiatives. In their award-winning paper, IAMO researchers argued that the perception of CSR communication as hypocrisy can be mitigated if companies manage to position their CSR action as a “credible commitment”. In this way, the legitimacy of companies in terms of a "license to operate" can be maintained in the long term. On a theoretical level, the article contributes to the debate on ethical and instrumental approaches to CSR by showing that ethical CSR elements can be used to fill gaps in the framework of the instrumental CSR approach.

The Highly Commended Paper Award is one of the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. The winners are chosen by a journal editorial team on the basis of outstanding contributions from the previous year. The key award-winning criterion is that the research must contribute something new and effective beyond the academic field. In addition, the paper must be well written and well argued.

The full article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-05-2018-0141.

Jauernig, J. and Valentinov, V. (2019): CSR as hypocrisy avoidance: a conceptual framework, Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 2-25.