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Reading Institutional Logics of CSR in India from a Post-colonial Location

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Abstract

The paper goes beyond critique to read institutional approaches, specifically institutional logics of CSR in India and their management by Indian firms, from a post-colonial location, to explore decolonising possibilities. Drawing on post-colonial approach of catachrestic reading, it reads institutional logics of CSR literature to argue against a linear hierarchical travel of western CSR logic into India, which is then adapted/adopted/translated or decoupled, along with the secondary status this implies for India; and suggests that Indian and western CSR logics are competing logics. It argues that these competing logics are non-core, but significant and need to be managed by Indian firms. An exploratory survey supports this argument. It also suggests a few testable propositions for CSR institutional logics using “deferment of routine development” and “strategic ambiguity in meanings” as mechanisms. In addition, it shows that decolonising purpose can also be realised by having cross-paradigmatic engagements with mainstream management and organisation studies scholarship such as institutional approaches.

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Fig. 1

Adapted from Jammulamadaka (2018, p. 101)

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Notes

  1. In this endeavour, neither are there guarantees that institutional scholarship will engage, nor are there reasons to believe this scholarship will not. Thus, the pragmatic choice is to appeal to the intellectual and ethical stance of institutional scholars.

  2. Most developing and emerging economics including India have been colonised. In this essay, the words developing, emerging, third world and post-colonial are being used interchangeably since India has been identified in all these categories. This is supported by Mignolo (2000) who clarifies that all these categories have been assigned by the centre and informed by a common logic of domination.

  3. This does not automatically imply a “xenophobe” perspective (Hodgkinson 1997) where the native is assumed to be completely well governed and only external influences are responsible for the inadequacies.

  4. Originary refers to “causing existence”. This usage to refer to origin is usual in PD writing.

  5. There could be other pasts.

  6. This literature has already identified prevailing global CSR logics as western CSR logics, and to this extent, this attribution is not the creation of this paper.

  7. The specific papers are not being listed here since the intention is not to undermine those papers.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge and thank Indian Institute of Management Calcutta for the support provided in doing this research (Grant No. 3586/RP:SCSRPIO/2014-15). The author would also like to thank Anirvan Pant for useful comments on an early draft.

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    Nimruji Jammulamadaka

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Jammulamadaka, N. Reading Institutional Logics of CSR in India from a Post-colonial Location. J Bus Ethics 163, 599–617 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4041-9

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