Confronted with increasing pressures to limit government spending on social welfare, more and more public policy makers welcome the growing social involvement of corporations. Yet, inasmuch as corporate citizenship may be desirable for society as a whole, it is unlikely to be embraced by a large number of organizations unless it is associated with concrete business benefits. This paper presents past findings and proposes future research directions useful for understanding the potential value of corporate citizenship as a marketing tool. Specifically, after examining the nature of corporate citizenship, the paper discusses its potential impact, first on consumers, then on employees. Two conceptual frameworks are introduced to guide research on the value of corporate citizenship in terms of external and internal marketing respectively.

Corporate citizenship as a marketing instrument: concepts, evidence and research directions

A review of the ecosystem concept — Towards coherent ecosystem design

Roles during innovation ecosystem genesis: A literature review

In this study, we review the literature on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the private sectors (industry and services) in developing countries. In particular, we collect evidence on what are the barriers to innovation creation and diffusion and the channels of innovation diffusion to and within developing countries. We find that innovation in developing countries is about creation or adoption of new ideas and technologies; but the capacity for innovation is embedded in and constituted by dynamics between geographical, socio-economic, political and legal subsystems. We contextualize the findings from the review in the current theoretical framework of diffusion of innovations, and we emphasize how the institutional context typical of developing countries impacts the diffusion itself.

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The Creation and Diffusion of Innovation in Developing Countries : A Systematic Literature Review

A shift in the entrepreneurial landscape is taking place brought about by grassroots innovators with little formal education and technological knowhow, living and working in penurious environments. This research represents an emerging third wave of literature on Bottom of the Pyramid innovation, where products are offered for and by the underserved. Using primary and secondary data derived from four cases of grassroots entrepreneurs in the Indian Subcontinent, the study explores the phenomenon where resource scarce entrepreneurs craft solutions that are environmental friendly, with low overall ownership costs, and use locally available material. We argue that the grassroots phenomenon can be fruitfully exploited to achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the UN as a post-2015 strategy for the future of global governance. These innovations might have a tremendous impact not only in terms of serving unmet and ignored consumer needs, but also longer term impacts through enhanced productivity, sustainability, poverty reduction and inclusion promotion.

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Crafting Sustainable Development Solutions: Frugal Innovations of Grassroots Entrepreneurs

Recent research on the Base of the Pyramid (‘BoP’) has called on firms to initiate market-driven interventions directed at the BoP population with the objective of identifying and pursuing mutually profitable means of attaining meaningful poverty alleviation outcomes. In response, firms as well as scholars have engaged at length with the creation of new products and services for the BoP consumer but paid far less attention to the BoP producer – a member of the BoP population who creates value by producing goods and services for sale in non-local markets. Additionally, extant studies have largely focused on snapshot views of BoP interventions by firms, thereby limiting our understanding of the emergence of meaningful poverty-alleviating outcomes over time from these interventions. This paper seeks to redirect attention towards the dynamic of the long-term engagement between the firm and the BoP producer. Using rich case data from Fabindia – an Indian handloom retailer – this paper examines how the engagement between Fabindia and communities of handloom artisans in India has persisted over a period of five decades. We found that, even as it encountered changes in the external environment and pursued newer organizational goals, Fabindia repeatedly renewed its engagement with handloom artisans and facilitated progression in poverty alleviation outcomes. Building on the insights from the case study, this paper presents a process model that highlights the role of innovative management practices in sustaining engagements between firms and BoP producers over time. Additionally, this paper proposes the concept of the ‘bridging enterprise’– a business enterprise that originates at the intersection of specific BoP communities and the corresponding non-local markets – as an interpreter and innovator reconciling the interests of stakeholders across the pyramid.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1659794_code1058085.pdf?abstractid=1659794&mirid=5

Building the BoP Producer Ecosystem: The Evolving Engagement of Fabindia with Indian Handloom Artisans

Managing plastic packaging waste in emerging economies: The case of EPR in India.

This paper reviews the current state of research in the area of corporate political activity to build an integrated model This model segregates the related but scattered corporate political activity constructs in literature into enablers, motivators, moderators, choices, and outcomes of corporate political activity This model can be help in reconciling contradictory results in literature For instance, several studies have found evidence positive, neutral, and negative effect of CPA on performance This model suggests that CPA-performance relationship is enabled and moderated by several factors, and controlling them may yield a better picture of CPA effect on performance We further suggest gaps in current literature and give suggestions for future research in this area

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Corporate Political Activity: An Integrated Model

Concern of researchers and reviewers on incongruent theoretical exposition and inconclusive empirical results linking corporate social responsible (CSR) actions and firm performance, drives this paper to come up with a three-stage process model which explains how strategic CSR actions contribute to firm performance. This paper also addresses the concern of critics regarding the business value of CSR by espousing a multidisciplinary theoretical approach which covers literature from CSR, social capital and resource based view. Such a theoretical exposition and the exploratory process model - a result of synthesis of fifty-four published business cases- uncover that the relation between CSR actions and firm performance is far from simple and is affected by numerous socio-economic and organizational variables. Recognizing the inter relationship among these dimensions and variables might enrich our understanding of the strategic nature of CSR and might lead to a rich research agenda that links CSR actions with firm performance.

Saroj Kumar Pani

Papers

Building the BoP Producer Ecosystem: The Evolving Engagement of Fabindia with Indian Handloom Artisans

Building the BoP Producer Ecosystem: The Evolving Engagement of Fabindia with Indian Handloom Artisans

Managing plastic packaging waste in emerging economies: The case of EPR in India.

Corporate Political Activity: An Integrated Model

Exploring the Strategic Edge of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Process Model ToUncover the Missing Links