Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Differing Expectations for Corporate Moral Responsibility: A Product Category Analysis

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Abstract

The moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability (MRCS) argues that according to the concept of corporate personhood, a corporation has moral responsibilities toward society and the environment, and can determine its level of commitment to meet those responsibilities (Ha-Brookshire, 2015). Using the MRCS theory, Jung and Ha-Brookshire (2017) attempted to empirically demonstrate U.S. consumers’ perceptions on a variety of corporate moral responsibility activities performed by consumer product companies, to determine whether each activity is a perfect or imperfect duty. Therefore, this exploratory study raised the following research question: What are the differences in consumers’ expectations toward corporate moral responsibility, from perfect, imperfect, or no duty, for various sustainability activities carried out by different consumer product companies? With 4,000 invitations, 1,046 complete responses were returned and analyzed (26.15% of response rate). U.S. consumers believe working conditions support to be a firm’s most important responsibility to fulfill. At the same time, transparency had the lowest mean, suggesting it is viewed as something good to do but not a necessary duty to fulfill all the time. Consumer responses to clothing and food product companies were fairly similar to each other, potentially rejecting our assumption that there are different expectations for these products. Further research is recommended to investigate consumer expectations for sustainability in diverse product categories in relation to their intimacy to consumers and/or perceived health risks.

How to Cite:

Jung, S., Lee, S. & Ha-Brookshire, J., (2018) “Differing Expectations for Corporate Moral Responsibility: A Product Category Analysis”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 75(1).