Explicit and implicit CSR: the United States and Europe
A sustainability head reporting in both the US and Europe asks why US firms announce voluntary social programmes as CSR while European firms more often meet similar duties through law and collective rules.
- Origin
- Matten and Moon, 2008
- Diagram type
- Comparison table
- Level of analysis
- Industry
Diagram
Explicit and implicit CSR: the United States and Europe
| Criterion | Explicit CSR (typical of the US) | Implicit CSR (typical of Europe) |
|---|---|---|
| What it describes | Corporate policies that assume and articulate responsibility for some societal interests | The corporation's role within wider formal and informal institutions for society's interests |
| What it consists of | Voluntary corporate programmes and strategies combining social and business value | Values, norms and rules that create mandatory and customary requirements for corporations |
| Motivation | Perceived expectations of stakeholders; corporate discretion | Societal consensus on the legitimate expectations of all major groups; obligations defined collectively |
| Language | Companies use the language of CSR | Companies do not normally call it CSR |
When to use it, and when not to
Use it when
Use it to explain why the same duty appears as a CSR programme in one country and as a legal or collective requirement in another, before comparing CSR reports across countries.
Pitfalls
Matten and Moon treat the difference as one of emphasis, not a dichotomy: the US has implicit elements, Europe has explicit ones, and explicit CSR has been rising in Europe. In the paper Europe includes the UK and Ireland, so it is not 'continental Europe'.
Sources
References
Listed A–Z by author surname, Harvard style. A source with a DOI links to https://doi.org/…; one without links to its page or says plainly that it has no DOI.
- Matten, D. and Moon, J. (2008) ‘'Implicit' and 'explicit' CSR: a conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility’, Academy of Management Review, 33(2), pp. 404–424.doi:10.5465/amr.2008.31193458Source page