Conceptualizing Social Responsibility in Operations Via Stakeholder Resource‐Based View

Abstract

We seek to conceptualize social responsibility for operations management (OM) research to develop a social responsibility lens through which to view operations. To do so, we first consider the corporate social responsibility, sustainability, as well as the bottom‐of‐the‐pyramid and shared value approaches and identify three challenges to developing such a lens: selecting the level of analysis, tackling the huge multitude of objectives, and developing theoretical underpinnings. We then propose a “stakeholder resource‐based view” (SRBV) building on resource‐based view, stakeholder theory, and utility theory to address these challenges. Under SRBV, all stakeholders are treated on a par with each other. These different stakeholders are all presumed to seek maximizing their respective (expected) utility, with different drivers shaping their preferences and do so they use their respective resources, routines and dynamic capabilities. SRBV provides (a) a descriptive framework for qualitative research, (b) an instrumental framework for empirical research, and (c) a normative framework for analytical research. It enables tackling many opportunities for OM research to do with social responsibility and we outline some of these in each of the three types of research methodologies.