| Summary: | Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important for companies during
the past decades. However, in every organization, there are various decisions that have to be
made with regard to CSR which determine the observable CSR behaviour of each company.
The purpose of this dissertation is to explain how CSR decisions are made on different levels
and how this affects homogeneous and heterogeneous CSR behaviour among companies who
act in the same market environment. To do this, the context of the food retail industry in the
United Kingdom (UK) has been chosen and is explored using the example of food waste.
This research draws on the concept of decision making and applies it into the field of CSR in
order to define three levels of CSR decision making: CSR engagement, CSR issues and CSR
strategy. For the evaluation of CSR strategies, the concept of Sustainable Value Creation was
adopted. Because of its explanatory power for organizational behaviour, Institutional Theory
(IT) is used as the underlying theoretical lens through which the CSR decisions are analysed.
The analysis of websites and expert interviews of four large UK food retailers revealed that
the institutional context played a major role in motivating the companies to address food
waste as a CSR topic, but was not as prominent in driving the decisions about the specific food
waste reduction strategies and activities. The predominant institutional influences differed
between those levels as well. Three major explanatory models for homogeneous CSR
behaviour between the retailers on the issue level and heterogeneous CSR behaviour on the
strategy level have been identified:
• The greater the standardization of the area of interest, the more homogeneous the
CSR strategies become.
• The longer the issue has been on the CSR agenda of all companies, the more
homogeneous the CSR strategies become.
• The power of the institutional context decreases from the first to the last level of CSR
decision making and simultaneously, the homogeneity decreases.
While those conclusions are untested and cannot be generalized, by generating those
explanations this dissertation provides valuable insights into IT and the food retail industry of
the UK and points out an interesting direction for future research.
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