CSR managers as hybrid professionals: managing at the intersection of coexisting logics

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is evolving, with new sustainability issues and related tasks emerging as priorities for large hotel groups. Within this institutionally complex environment, the role of CSR manager (a relatively new professional role) is becoming ever more diverse and contextualised. We unveil how CSR managers advance their work amidst logic plurality in the early stages of institutionalising CSR. Through interviews (with eight senior managers responsible for sustainability and eight sustainability experts) and pattern-inducing interpretive analysis of the resulting data, we gain a practical understanding of CSR under four institutional logics: corporate, market, professional and sustainability. Three micro-level strategies - anchoring, switching and interlinking - allow individuals to advance organisational CSR work where multiple logics are pertinent for legitimate actions. Adherence to a single frame of reference (e.g. one logic) guides most organisational practices, with managers rarely switching between logics to adapt to situations and audiences, or linking practices enacted from different logics. This results in low problematisation of the work of CSR managers, and avoidance of tensions. Implications are discussed for organisations engaging in CSR, including the organisational advantages and risks that emerge as CSR managers evolve to become hybrid professionals.

Keywords:

• Institutional logics
• corporate social responsibility
• sustainability
• hybrid managers
• complexity
• hospitality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mireia Guix

Mireia Guix is a lecturer in tourism at the UQ Business School, The University of Queensland. She has consulted in projects for United Nations Environmental Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission, and national tourism government agencies. Her research focuses on sustainability accounting and corporate social responsibility for the tourism industry.

Tanja Petry

Tanja Petry works for a large social service provider in Austria as accommodation manager for refugees with disabilities. She is a doctoral student at the Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism at the University of Innsbruck and has published in outlets such as The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Employee Relations and Current Issues in Tourism. With a background in Organization Studies, her main research interests are employer-employee relationships, sustainable management and crisis management.