Abstract
The way companies understand and address their role in society, the economy, and the environment is critical for a sustainable future and is debated by a number of scholars and policymakers. For a long time, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been the core of understanding and addressing how businesses can contribute to social and economic well-being. In recent years, CSR has been increasingly criticized and is starting to be replaced by the newer concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) coined by Porter and Kramer (2011). CSV is described as a new way for companies to create value while simultaneously contributing positively to social and environmental goals. Both concepts are criticized, and there is an ongoing debate over how best to understand responsible business. This study examines the change from CSR to CSV and aims to explore where the understanding of responsible business in Norway is heading. The analysis is based on the Norwegian government’s approach to addressing responsible business. The understanding is further examined in two governmental institutions, Norfund and Innovation Norway, and two types of Norwegian companies, GRAS and Yara. The data is based on interviews and governmental, institutional, and company documents. The findings suggest that the Norwegian government, institutions, and companies, are moving away from understanding responsible business as CSR and are starting to refer to it as CSV. Most informants prefer CSV to CSR because they see CSR as philanthropic, voluntary, and external to the core business and are therefore searching for a new understanding. While CSR is kept in many documents, CSV offers strengths in terms of the appeal of a new concept by evaluating social and environmental concerns more strategically than CSR. Accounting for the weaknesses of CSV, analyzing what is new about CSV, how it differentiates from a broader academic understanding of CSR, and if it solves CSR’s limitations, it remains questionable whether CSV really offers a new approach to dealing with the tension between society, businesses, and the complexity of today’s global value chains. In light of the academic approach to CSR, the data demonstrates that the understanding of responsible business is changing in the examined cases away from CSR potentially to CSV. The findings imply that even though CSR remains present to some extent, CSV is at the forefront of replacing CSR as the main concept of understanding responsible business in the investigated Norwegian cases.