Paper short abstract:

Through a multisited study of a Norwegian state-owned renewable energy corporation, this paper explores how the increasing embedding of CSR in international guidelines impacts the way in which responsibility is handled when large energy corporations operate overseas.

Paper long abstract:

While CSR used to be considered voluntary acts of 'doing good', corporations now try to integrate social and environmental issues in risk management and decision-making systems, in performance standards, and in standardized reporting frameworks intended to ensure transparency and accountability. The practice and language of CSR has thus increasingly become informed by and embedded in a multitude of international guidelines. How do these changes affect the way in which responsibility is handled by corporations? And what is the role of states in the shift to standards? We pursue these questions in a study of one of the international projects of a particularly 'responsible' firm, the renewable energy corporation Statkraft, which is owned by the Norwegian state. The state enacts its ownership of the corporation through instructing it to primarily pursue profit for its owner, but also to act responsibly through signing up to or following specific international standards. Taking a multisited approach to the application of standards in Statkraft has enabled us to identify and explore the gap between field reality and corporate presentation, to observe that they act very independently of the specific state expectations, and explore the multifaceted nature of CSR within and at the fringes of the corporation. We argue that while the application of standards results in much less standardization than what is often assumed, the elusive figure of the 'stakeholder' plays an important role in holding together the heterogeneous field of corporate responsibility.