A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Analysis of Social Issues and Evaluation of Business Response Patterns

A conceptual framework is developed to analyze and evaluate business response patterns under different temporal and sociocultural conditions. Corporate responses are classified along three dimensions: corporate behavior or social obligation, social responsibility, and social responsiveness. The contextual component (external environment) is analyzed by dividing the elapsed time between the emergence of a problem and its ultimate solution into four categories: the preproblem stage, the problem identification stage, the remedy and relief stage, and the prevention stage. Examples of current application of the framework and directions for future research are indicated.