Att styra och att genomsyra - en fallstudie av hur The Body Shop använder organisatorisk styrning för att hantera sin höga varumärkesrisk
By the year of 2007, 97 % of all listed companies in Europe had a CSR strategy described on their website. As the concept of CSR during the last decades has increased rapidly in popularity, a need to understand how such a strategy can be implemented has followed. While working with CSR in an integrated manner shows similarities to other popular management ideas, such as Lean and TQM, companies applying to a CSR strategy has been shown to be under higher scrutiny from media and NGO:s. Through a case study this thesis examines how these special circumstances of a CSR strategy makes The Body Shop use organizational control to avoid being subject to scandals due to not fulfilling the promises made to its customers. The results show that The Body Shop's commitment to CSR creates a need for a stringent bureaucratic control system that highly restricts the freedom of action for its employees. The same commitment, however, also enables a cultural control system where the The Body Shop's values provides an acceptable excuse for the otherwise controlling environment. In conclusion, The Body Shop's commitment to CSR gives rise to a control configuration where the combination of a bureaucratic and a cultural control system successfully enables The Body Shop to minimize their risks in a way that is tolerated by its employees.