RCIS

Abstract:

Add to that the fact Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was an unprecedented crisis event in the history of corporate social responsibility and suddenly CSR became not just a fluffy, feel-good do-good program but an urgent means organizations can leverage for executive national security strategy. The traditional understanding of CSR as charity was unable to reflect how firms would adapt their social conduct while under the extreme condition of a sustained armed conflict within its jurisdiction. The purpose of the study is to develop a typology of CSR strategies for Ukrainian enterprises in wartime, based on the approach by itaktik theory and to determine situational factors that determine the choice of specific strategies for social responsibility corporate behavior. The research is carried out as a multidimensional analysis (of the sample consisting of five Ukrainian companies of various sizes and industries (Kernel Holding, Myronivsky Hliboproduct, Farmak, Nova Poshta, BetterMe) through models comparison aimed at discovering systemic relations between macrofactors (contextual background) and particular strategies. Such activity could also be supported with broad category of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR: The survey results guided us in the identification of four typologies of CSR strategies: reactive survival (response concerning immediate humanitarian aid), adaptive strategic (fast adjustment to present actions and measures/drivers) systemic resilience (use ofCSR as a part component of core business activities to ensure national security post-conflict transformationaland innovative solutions for long-term reconstruction). A quantitative analysis of the reports of companies for 2022-2025 demonstrated a significant scale of activities: Farmak invested more than UAH 125 million in CSR projects, Nova Poshta increased revenues by UAH 22.8 –35.2 billion, Kernel increased exports by 6.5–7.5 thousand tons MHP provided humanitarian aid to almost 11,500 tons and BetterMe covered from 250 to 410 thousands users. Five situational factors (organization size, vulnerability location, industry criticality, financial capability, and pre-war strategy development maturity) were found to be systematically associated with the selected strategy. The conceptualization of systemic Corporate Social Responsibility sustainability in the agro-industrial sector is a theoretical contribution, and by this way corporate responsibility contributes to ensuring the country’s food security because it refers to production volumes. It is practically significant, since the contextual and strategic fit matrix has been designed as a diagnostic tool for managers, donors and policy makers in post conflict context anywhere in the world.

Keywords:

contingency theory; organizational resilience; military context; food security; agro-industrial sector; typology of strategies; social impact; post-conflict recovery.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33788/rcis.92.4

Download: Corporate Social Responsibility as a Tool for Sustainability: the Experience of Ukrainian Companies during the War