Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Corporate Responsibility in India: Academic Perspectives on the Companies Act 2013

Manfred Max Bergman
* ORCID logo ,
Zinette Bergman
ORCID logo ,
Yael Teschemacher
,
Bimal Arora
ORCID logo ,
Divya Jyoti
,
Rijit Sengupta
Version 1 : Received: 9 August 2019 / Approved: 12 August 2019 / Online: 12 August 2019 (13:57:39 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Bergman, M.M.; Bergman, Z.; Teschemacher, Y.; Arora, B.; Jyoti, D.; Sengupta, R. Corporate Responsibility in India: Academic Perspectives on the Companies Act 2013. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5939. Bergman, M.M.; Bergman, Z.; Teschemacher, Y.; Arora, B.; Jyoti, D.; Sengupta, R. Corporate Responsibility in India: Academic Perspectives on the Companies Act 2013. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5939.

Abstract

Developing prosperous and inclusive societies requires a reformulation of the business-society nexus toward sustainability. This means that all economically motivated behaviors of firms need to also consider their social and environmental impact, and all social and environmental policies need to also consider their impact on the economy. With the Companies Act 2013, the Indian government adopted a legislative approach to reconfigure the business-society nexus. Mandating what has been considered discretionary elicited an extensive academic debate. We employ Content Configuration Analysis on 70 local and international English-language book chapters, research articles, reports, reviews, and expert commentaries published between 2013 and 2019 to develop a typology of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the Companies Act 2013. We find that, among the large set of arguments for and against the Act, specific arguments extolling its advantages concurrently appear as disadvantages in other texts. This paradox is indicative of the difficulties of satisfying stakeholder expectations, as well as the complexities corporate responsibility programs face in India. By systematizing the opportunities and challenges associated with the Companies Act 2013, we reveal how, similar to China, context and culture influence India’s socioeconomic development trajectory beyond the conventional market economy canon.

Keywords

India; Companies Act 2013; business-society nexus; corporate responsibility; Content Configuration Analysis

Subject

Business, Economics and Management, Business and Management

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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