Purchasing social responsibility : a conceptual study

Abstract

This paper focuses on Purchasing Social Responsibility (PSR). Suppliers play an important role in the overall corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts of the purchasing firm. The purpose of this paper is to explore potential firm performance effects from PSR, which contributes to an area of research that is limited at this point. The aim is to develop a survey instrument based on a set of formulated hypotheses and a conceptual framework. These are grounded in a literature review of core concepts within CSR, purchasing and PSR. We hypothesize how the level of PSR is determined, as well as how PSR has the potential to improve performance through acquiring intangible resources and capabilities. We discuss how PSR can improve shareholder value and what hinders implementation of the concept. Since it is outside of the scope of our paper to test the hypotheses and survey empirically, we develop and discuss some key methodological issues and how the survey is developed.