Mitigating the environmental and social footprint of brownfields: The case for a peripheral CSR approach

作     者：van Balen, Mitchell Haezendonck, Elvira Verbeke, Alain 

作者机构：Vrije Univ Brussel Fac Social Sci Brussels Belgium Vrije Univ Brussel Solvay Business Sch Brussels Belgium Univ Calgary Haskayne Sch Business Calgary AB Canada Univ Reading Henley Business Sch Reading Berks England 

出 版 物：《EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL》 (欧洲管理杂志)

年 卷 期：2021年第39卷第6期

页      面：710-719页

核心收录：

学科分类：0202[经济学-应用经济学] 02[经济学] 1202[管理学-工商管理] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 

主　　题：Plant closure Internalizing externalities Corporate social responsibility Brownfield Mitigating environmental footprints Core CSR Peripheral CSR 

摘      要：Industrial plant closures create a largely unexplored challenge for corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. Such plant closures lead to brownfield sites: economic assets and large pieces of land that often cannot be redeployed for alternative purposes, except by incurring significant costs. The direct effects of plant closures typically include a rise in unemployment and value chain disturbance (or dismantling), but brownfields are usually also associated with additional social effects and environmental pollution. Here, a proactive CSR strategy means reducing or mitigating the joint, negative social and environmental footprint of industrial plant closures beyond what is mandated by law (which has tended primarily to address direct effects). We assess the various strategies firms can pursue to mitigate negative, post closure footprints and we distinguish between two alternative strategic options beyond the legal obligations approach, namely the core business related (core) CSR approach, and the peripheral CSR approach. We explore the case of a plant closure by Bekaert S.A., a large, Belgian industrial firm, which adopted a peripheral CSR approach to manage and redevelop a brownfield site. In this context, we identify four enabling conditions for peripheral CSR to be implemented effectively. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://***/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).