Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Emergence of Sociological Institutions in the Field of Corporate Social Responsibility

SES-1333731马克·格兰特肖恩·波普斯坦福大学社会学机构是“标准化的相互作用序列”，如复式记账和内部劳动力市场。关于制度的核心问题是它们如何出现、扩散、巩固和解散。 机构的出现，特别是在拟议的论文项目的核心。本研究探讨了关于组织绩效的意义的话语竞赛，其结果往往反映在排名，评级和指数，试图评估组织对他们的同行。这些评价标准的变化可能是制度化的前兆，因为它们往往先于一系列新的组织做法。例如，近年来《美国新闻与世界报道》对大学排名的改变，对大学的班级规模、新生保留率和校友捐赠等做法产生了巨大的、几乎是立竿见影的影响。目前研究的案例是企业社会责任领域，它围绕着这样一种思想，即企业应该超越狭隘的利润焦点或最低法律的要求，对社会作出承诺。现在有几十个组织对企业社会责任的表现进行评估，以至于一些评论家形容这是一场正在酝酿的“排名战”。“拟议研究的主要目的是了解这些评价办法如何影响组织业绩，以及各组织如何设法改变评价办法。研究计划是（a）确定CSR评估人员群体并对其方法学的变化进行分类;（B）通过（c）大规模、纵向（1991-2011），自动分析所有罗素2000公司的自愿CSR报告;并通过半结构化访谈（e）24评估和（d）和行业分层随机抽样的48个企业社会责任官员在罗素2000公司。扎根理论将被用来识别反复出现的叙事模式，将它们分组为概念，将它们组装成类别，最后根据企业社会责任领域的绩效指标变化绘制各种类别的生命历程。更广泛的影响企业社会责任方面的许多工作本身就涉及更广泛的影响，例如，通过寻求最佳做法来减少污染或增加执行董事会中的少数群体代表。本研究通过产生一个具有广泛用途的数据集来进一步推进这一研究，例如，用于回答以下问题：（a）公司正在处理哪些社会问题以及（B）它们如何这样做。在教学和培训中更广泛的影响将来自于在科学发现的每个阶段将本科生作为研究助理。助理将接受工作流程规程、保密、日期编码、数据储存、参考资料管理软件、采访方法、内容分析、学术写作和口头陈述方面的培训。更广泛的影响也可以通过使调查结果容易和廉价地获得来增加。本研究中的所有编码都将使用开源软件（R编程语言）。调查结果不仅将传播给学者（例如，在CSR会议上），而是对从业者和学生。研究结果、代码本和编程脚本将以普通受众可访问和可理解的格式发布在研究者的个人网站上。为了确保透明度和可重复性，研究者打算将数据集提交给ICPSR数据存储库。

SES-1333731Mark GranovetterShawn PopeStanford UniversitySociological institutions are "standardized interaction sequences" such as double-entry accounting and internal labor markets. Core questions about institutions are how they emerge, diffuse, entrench, and dissolve. Institutional emergence, in particular, is at the heart of the proposed dissertation project. This study examines discursive contests about the meaning of organizational performance, the outcomes of which are often reflected in rankings, ratings, and indices, which attempt to evaluate organizations against their peers. Changes in these evaluation criteria can be precursors to institutionalization, as they often precede a series of new organizational practices. Changes, for example, in recent years in how the U.S. News and World Report ranks colleges have had a large, almost immediate effect on such university practices as class size, freshmen retention, and alumni giving. The case of the current study is the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which surrounds the idea that firms should commit to society by going beyond a narrow profit focus or minimum legal requirements. Dozens of groups now evaluate CSR performance, such that some commentators describe a brewing "rankings war." Understanding how these evaluation schemes shape organizational performance and how organizations, in turn, seek to shape changes in the evaluation schemes is the primary object of the proposed study. The research plan is to (a) identify the CSR evaluator population and catalog changes in their methodologies; (b) capture discourse about these changes through (c) a large-scale, longitudinal (1991-2011), automated analysis of the voluntary CSR reports of the population of all Russell 2000 companies; and through semi-structured interviews with (e) 24 evaluators and (d) and an industry-stratified random sample of 48 CSR officers at Russell 2000 companies. Grounded theory will be used to indentify recurring narrative patterns, group them into concepts, assemble them into categories, and finally chart the life-course of the various categories against the changes performance metrics in the field of corporate social responsibility. Broader ImpactsMuch work on CSR inherently concerns broader impacts, by seeking the best practices, for example, to reduce pollution or increase minority representation on executive boards. This study furthers this research by yielding a dataset of great general use, for example, for answering questions about (a) which social issues corporations are taking up and (b) how they do so. Broader impacts in teaching and training will come from including undergraduates as research assistants in each stage of scientific discovery. Assistants will be trained in workflow protocols, confidentiality maintenance, date coding, data storage, reference management software, interviewing methods, content analysis, academic writing, and oral presentation. Broader impacts are also increased by making the findings easily and inexpensively available. All coding in this study will employ open-source software (the R programming language). Findings will be disseminated not only to scholars (e.g., at CSR conferences), but to practitioners, and to students. The findings, codebook, and programming script will be published the investigator's personal website, in a format accessible and understandable to a general audience. To ensure transparency and reproducibility, the investigator intends to submit the dataset to the ICPSR data repository.