Corporate Social Responsibility for Sustainable Tourism

Xavier Font, Jennifer Lynes, Xavier Font, Jennifer Lynes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429648601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

This comprehensive volume considers the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of tourism and hospitality firms towards stakeholders, exploring CSR in terms of broad stakeholder accountability by considering both the scope of reporting and the quality of stakeholder engagement. The authors analyse how CSR contributes to shareholder accountability (i.e. as financial performance) by developing a multiple attribute decision-making model to deploy CSR resources, analysing how CSR contributes to the management of systematic risk as part of an internationalisation strategy, and showing how philanthropy is used as a legitimisation tool.

The authors then review how managers negotiate CSR priorities within their organisational strategy by accounting for the utility gained by family firms from ecological and social outcomes in comparison with profit outcomes, analysing the trade-offs of co-constructing a sustainability innovation and weighting factors in water planning. They also review how employees are central to the delivery of CSR actions by exploring how green organisational culture affects organisational citizenship behaviour, how organisational green practices impact an organisation's image and its customers' environmental consciousness and behavioural intentions, and how organisational CSR affects employee pro-environmental citizenship and tourists' pro-environmental citizenship. The book concludes by reviewing the role of consumers in CSR with ten strategies to close the consumers' attitude-behaviour gap and an account of how customers' trust is a mediator between CSR, image and loyalty.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Corporate social responsibility in tourism and hospitality

Xavier Font and Jennifer Lynes

ABSTRACT

The past decade has seen significant growth in the tourism and hospitality literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Indeed, over 70% of the articles on this topic have been published in the past five years. Through the application of a stakeholder lens, this paper explores how CSR has developed within the extant literature, paying particular attention to current gaps and highlighting the contributions of the research in this special issue. This emerging research on CSR in the context of tourism and hospitality is pushing past the boundaries of early approaches to corporate sustainability by providing empirical evidence to support the importance of integrating a range of stakeholder perspectives and needs throughout the planning, implementation, and evaluation of CSR initiatives. We observe that while there is ample research on certain stakeholder groups such as management, employees, shareholders, and consumers, there is less emphasis on the role of communities and ecosystems as stakeholders and very little related to suppliers, NGOs, and government. Although tourism and hospitality firms may not be subject to the same pressures as other industries, there remain important opportunities to both document and engage these external stakeholders in the journey towards sustainability.

Introduction

In 1983, an environmental activist by the name of Jay Westerveld was travelling in the Pacific islands when he came across a placard in a hotel asking guests to reuse their towels for the sake of the environment. Westerveld saw this request from the hotel not as a gesture of altruism but rather, as a way for the hotel to save money – not the planet. A few years later, Westerveld published an essay based on this experience in which he coined the term “greenwashing” (Watson, 2016). Despite this early dialogue on the motivations for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in hospitality and tourism, it would take another three decades for academic research in this area to really get underway.

Indeed, it has only been in the last 10 years that we have started to see significant growth in this literature. In 2006, there were no articles published on CSR in tourism and hospitality; in 2007 there were two papers(Holcomb et al., 2007; Merwe & Wocke, 2007) and by 2016 the number of publications peaked at 88. In fact, a search of the Web of Science database for refereed books or articles that self-identified as being related to either CSR, corporate sustainability, corporate responsibility, or corporate social and environmental responsibility AND either tourism or hospitality (including research related to airlines, cruise ships, and restaurants) reveals that 366 articles have been published in journals and refereed conference proceedings on this subject, and over 70% of all articles on this subject have been published in the past five years (see Figure 1). Broadly, the focus of this paper is to take stock of the extant CSR literature in the disciplines of hospitality and tourism to critically explore how it has progressed and to draw insights into where it should be further developed in the future. More specifically, this paper positions the research included in this special issue in the context of existing literature, highlighting the gaps in knowledge that they address and the novel contributions that they offer.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/rsus.

As the content of the articles in this special issue took shape, we observed an unplanned yet distinct common thread that wove these pieces together: an emphasis on the fundamental role that stakeholders play within a firm’s CSR practises. This thread aligns nicely with Carroll’s 2016 reflection on his original CSR pyramid of CSR, in which he notes several recent appeals in the literature to redefine CSR from “corporate social responsibility”, to “corporate stakeholder responsibility”. It is, thus, through the lens of “stakeholders” that we critically examine how previous research on CSR in tourism and hospitality aligns with this current issue.

The concept of CSR has evolved since the 1950s, as society has placed greater expectations on companies (Carroll, 1999). The evolution of definitions of CSR has been shaped by how it is socially constructed (Dahlsrud, 2008). Rather than repeating well established definitions, it is worth relating the subject of this journal and its focus on sustainable tourism with the concept of CSR. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), typically known as the Brundtland Commission, defined sustainable development as meeting the current society’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do so. Sustainability, therefore, is the aim of both this journal and this special issue. Responsibility is the human response to that aim: it is a (relative) choice in relation to, firstly, accepting that sustainability is important and secondly, deciding which initiatives, activities, and other changes one is willing to undertake in response. Response(ability) relates to activities pursued to achieve a social good and performed to meet social requirements (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001; Perrini, 2006).

Figure 1. Number of published articles related to CSR and either tourism or hospitality.

Responsibility is embedded within the five dimensions of CSR that are common to most definitions (Dahlsrud, 2008) and is linked to the concept of stakeholders. CSR is described as a process whereby individuals identify stakeholder demands on their organisations and negotiate their level of responsibility towards the collective wellbeing of society, environment, and economy (Dahlsrud, 2008). Such a description highlights that responsibility is socially constructed by organisations engaged in CSR. The degree to which an organisation acknowledges responsibility towards society determines how proactive their approach to CSR is and, therefore, the pro-activity of a stakeholder. It also determines whether their actions contribute towards shared wellbeing, depending on whether these actions are motivated by seeking benefits to oneself, to others, or to the biosphere (De Groot & Steg, 2008; Schultz, 2001). Under this conception of CSR stakeholders, and their relation to organisations engaged in CSR, lie key indicators of responsibility for individual CSR strategies. In short, by looking at how CSR strategies define and engage stakeholders, one can determine how inclusive and proactive a strategy is, as well as the breadth of its application (i.e. whom may benefit, and to what degree they will benefit, from its implementation). Figure 2 depicts the range of external and internal stakeholders that may be considered as part of a firm’s CSR practices. Stakeholders in the unshaded boxes (i.e. consumers, shareholders, management, and employees) are prominently discussed in tourism literature on CSR; stakeholders in the textured boxes (i.e. communities and ecosystems) are moderately but not widely discussed; and stakeholders in the shaded boxes (i.e. suppliers, NGOs and government) are virtually untouched in the literature. .

Previous studies have mapped out the CSR literature in tourism and hospitality (e.g. Aragon-Correa, Martin-Tapia, & de la Torre-Ruiz, 2015; Coles, Fenclova, & Dinan, 2014; Farrington, Curran, Gori, O’Gorman, & Queenan, 2017). These studies have found that the lens used to study CSR is often determined by the reasons one has for investigating the practice, ranging from CSR as a tool for raising corporate profits, improving political performance, or increasing stakeholder accountability, through to CSR as a means for studying the ethics of decision-making (Garriga & Melee, 2004). There is also agreement that there has been disproportionate attention paid to CSR as a tool for enhancing economic gain and corporate legitimacy.

Figure 2. Overview of external and internal stakeholders related to a firm’s CSR practices.

In the spirit of providing a different (stakeholder centric) lens, this article is structured as follows. Accepting that CSR is a social construction, we start with a comprehensive literature review of CSR in the tourism and hospitality sector, presenting five sections that explore what CSR means to different stakeholder groups. We first review the meaning of CSR as stakeholder accountability in its broadest sense. We then consider what CSR means for the “elephant in the room” that guides all CSR activities: the shareholder (see Friedman, 1970 for more on the relationship between shareholders and social responsibility). We continue by examining how CSR is enacted by organisational management in order to deliver on the organisation’s strategy, as well as how this is mediated by the organisation’s culture. This is followed by what CSR means to employees and how it is associated with human resources management, before moving on to the role of consumers and how the organisation deploys persuasive marketing and communication efforts. Discussion of the role of communities and ecosystems as stakeholders remains an under-represented component of the research on stakeholders. Readers may observe the absence of discussion related to governments and NGOs in this paper. This is because the tourism literature has paid little attention to their potential role in nudging tourism firms to be more responsible.

Overview of the literature

Society: stakeholder accountability

The real meaning of the S in CSR is that companies have a responsibility towards ensuring that all aspects of the business have a positive impact on our society. Currently, it appears that companies are making superficial changes to appear to be more sustainable, perhaps because stakeholders are not sufficiently well-organised to demand change (Coles, Fenclova, & Dinan, 2011; Dodds & Kuehnel, 2010; Weaver, 2014). Industry surveys provide some explanations for the relatively poor quality of CSR engagement. Despite having a good understanding of the term CSR, members of the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) implement primarily environmental rather than sociocultural CSR actions, mostly for reputational reasons (Sheldon & Park, 2011). UK airlines use self-serving language to justify their actions (Burns & Cowlishaw, 2014), and UK conference venues undertake eco-savings or tokenistic CSR activities (Whitfield & Dioko, 2012).

It is clear that increasing the accountability of sustainability practices improves CSR engagement. Merwe and Wocke (2007) reported that the membership of South African “responsible tourism” associations increased the practice and communication of CSR actions in the region, although arguably not to the extent that may have been desired. In Malaysia, we find both endogenous and exogenous antecedents for primarily social CSR actions in local hotel chains (Abaeian, Yeoh, & Khong, 2014). Even those companies that believe that sustainability is important find that dedicating time to it, and the cost of acting more responsibly, both make companies less competitive (Frey & George, 2010). These findings suggest that improving CSR practices, especially those related to sustainability, will require stakeholders to become more effective at lobbying for industry-wide acknowledgement of the importance of social and environmental responsibilities towards society.

Ideally, CSR measurement scales would be grounded in a detailed understanding of what stakeholders expect from each business in relation to the context in which it operates, however the reality is rarely quite as straightforward (Martínez, Pérez, & Rodríguez del Bosque, 2013). For example, Macao’s gambling industry engages only symbolically with CSR activities, emphasising the economic contribution the industry makes to the destination while turning a blind eye to the social issues of gambling addiction, and environmental impacts (Leung & Snell, 2017). Stakeholders themselves often see CSR as secondary to business as usual. A study about the CSR of a Taiwanese airport, for instance, found that safety and security, service quality, and corporate governance were prioritised by stakeholders over criteria related to either environmental management, or employee and work environment management (Chang & Yeh, 2016). In general, consumers believe that long-term sustainable economic practices are more central to a business’ CSR programme than its social and environmental dimensions (Martínez et al., 2013).

CSR reports are an excellent tool for gauging what companies believe their responsibility is towards society, as well as how they act on perceived obligations. Only 18 out of the 50 largest hotel groups in the world, and 12 out of 80 cruise companies, provide CSR reports that contain environmental, social, and economic information (Bonilla-Priego, Font, & Pacheco, 2014; Guix, Bonilla-Priego, & Font, 2017). The literature indicates a lack of consistency in CSR accounting methodologies, the scope of reporting, and the activities undertaken (Bonilla-Priego et al., 2014; Burns & Cowlishaw, 2014; de Grosbois, 2012; Holcomb, Upchurch, & Okumus, 2007). This results in a significant gap between stated CSR commitments, actual practices, and the quality of data shared with stakeholders (de Grosbois, 2012; Font, Walmsley, Cogotti, McCombes, & H€ ausler, 2012). Moreover, there are gaps in the information provided to employees, suppliers and shareholders in relation to, for example, information transparency, labour rights, human rights, and sustainability in supplier relations (Perez & Rodríguez Del Bosque, 2014). All of these gaps exist because CSR reports te...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Corporate social responsibility in tourism and hospitality
• 2 The boundary of corporate social responsibility reporting: the case of the airline industry
• 3 The process of sustainability reporting in international hotel groups: an analysis of stakeholder inclusiveness, materiality and responsiveness
• 4 An assessment model of corporate social responsibility practice in the tourism industry
• 5 Internationalization and corporate social responsibility in the restaurant industry: risk perspective
• 6 The corporate philanthropy and legitimacy strategy of tourism firms: a community perspective
• 7 Green organizational climates and employee pro-environmental behaviour in the hotel industry
• 8 Customer responses to environmentally certified hotels: the moderating effect of environmental consciousness on the formation of behavioral intentions
• 9 Activating tourists' citizenship behavior for the environment: the roles of CSR and frontline employees' citizenship behavior for the environment
• 10 Trade-offs between dimensions of sustainability: exploratory evidence from family firms in rural tourism regions
• 11 Eco-innovation for sustainable tourism transitions as a process of collaborative co-production: the case of a carbon management calculator for the Dutch travel industry
• 12 Influential factors in water planning for sustainable tourism destinations
• 13 All aboard! Strategies for engaging guests in corporate responsibility programmes
• 14 Trust as mediator of corporate social responsibility, image and loyalty in the hotel sector
• Index