Corporate Social Responsibility at Tourism Destinations: Toward a Social License to Operate
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a term increasingly employed to denote ethical behavior with respect to various shareholder, employee, consumer, supplier, and competitor stakeholder groups. It is often shaped and expressed through community engagement strategies in which firms reach out to these groups to address societal concerns as well as corporate objectives. Little research probes how CSR relationships are initiated and evolve in tourism destinations. This article outlines the key theoretical foundations of CSR and illustrates how these concepts may be translated into stakeholder engagement strategies in mountain resort destinations. It uses empirical research findings from case studies of CSR relationships between Intrawest, a large North American resort corporation, and stakeholders in two Canadian mountain tourism destinations. It is argued that the extent to which these CSR strategies are employed is a function of both in situ stakeholder saliency and the ability of community stakeholders to provide what has been referred to as a "social license to operate."
Keywords: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; MONT TREMBLANT; QUEBEC; SOCIAL LICENSE TO OPERATE; STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT; WHISTLER B.C
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 June 2007
- Tourism Review International is a peer-reviewed journal that advances excellence in all fields of tourism research, promotes high-level tourism knowledge, and nourishes cultural awareness in all sectors of the tourism industry by integrating industry and academic perspectives. Its international and interdisciplinary nature ensures that the needs of those interested in tourism are served by documenting industry practices, discussing tourism management and planning issues, providing a forum for primary research and critical examinations of previous research, and by chronicling changing tourism patterns and trends at the local, regional and global scale.
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