Firms operating in developing economies are increasingly expected to implement CSR practices aligned with recognized global standards. Drawing on extensive field study data in four Latin American countries, we contribute to business ethics scholarship by making visible and explaining firm shortcomings across social, environmental, and governance goals and activities of CSR. Building on and extending sensemaking literature, we find that leaders and managers responsible for their firms’ CSR activities make sense of and justify CSR shortcomings. We specify that justification based (...) on individual, organizational/industry, and macro-environmental influences serves as a mechanism that decouples firms’ actual CSR practices from recognized CSR standards. Further, we propose that detachment, involving disconnection from the local operating environment, underlies the CSR shortcomings of firms. We develop a theoretical multi-level model that specifies justification as a mechanism and detachment as an underlying driver of CSR shortcomings. (shrink)

This research analyzes how family embeddedness affects the decision of owners in charge of small entrepreneurial family firms operating in an emerging country to participate in private-sector corruption. Prior research has typically assumed that those in charge of family firms choose to participate in corruption to receive an immediate economic benefit. We challenge this assumption and argue that family influences the decision of the owner of small entrepreneurial family firms to participate in private-sector corruption driven by the pursuit of both (...) short-term economic (profit maximization) and long-term non-economic goals, including attaining upper social class status (even if this decreases economic gains) for the family unit. We further find that in the context of an emerging market, trusted intermediaries can be seen as family members by the owners in charge of small entrepreneurial family firms and can influence them to participate in illicit activities. We also contend that those in charge of small entrepreneurial family businesses manage participation in private-sector corruption by dissociating and framing means. (shrink)