The standardization puzzle: An issue management approach to understand corporate responsibility standards for the forest products industry

There are increasing discussions regarding creation of global corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards. One important approach to understanding CSR is issue management. We adopted an issue identification approach to examine the issues faced by the forest products industries in the United States and India. Interviews were conducted with a range of key informants regarding social responsibility issues in the forest products industry in both countries. Our results show that there are marked differences in the issues with which key informants think forest products companies should be concerned. The results suggest that even though overarching CSR guidelines are globally relevant, any CSR standard for global forest products companies must maintain context-specific components.