Professor

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not a new phenomenon. For example, Smith (2003) outlined how Sit Titus Salt founded the company town of Saltaire in the nineteenth century in order to provide his employees with better working conditions than the alternatives available at the time. However, what has emerged as a new reality in CSR is the range of stakeholder expectations that managers must incorporate into their planning (Clarkson, 1995; Dawkins and Lewis, 2003; Harrison and Freeman, 1999; Neville and Menguc, 2006). Salt, for example, was perhaps motivated by altruism for his employees, or perhaps rationalized that happy employees are more productive and thus provide economic benefits. He likely did not take into account the supply chain, consumers, activists groups and NGOs, and certainly he would not have issued CSR reports in order to attract socially responsible investors.

This increase in stakeholder engagement is exactly what managers face today. It is simply not good enough to engage in CSR on an issue specific basis with one stakeholder, since the actions of the firm are now monitored and scrutinized by a host of internal and external stakeholders. However, the majority of CSR research involves single stakeholders, examined one at a time in isolation of others (Ferrell, 2004), and Knox and colleagues (2005) found that stakeholders other than the customer are not a priority for most firms. Indeed, many studies include experiments with consumers to determine purchase intentions while specifically ignoring the effects of CSR on other stakeholder groups. One notable exception is a recent study by Sen and colleagues (2006) which investigated the effects of CSR recognizing that individuals act as consumers, potential employees, and investors all at the same time.

In addressing this gap, Maignan and colleagues (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004; Maignan, Ferrell, and Ferrell, 2005) have proposed frameworks for developing a multiple stakeholder orientation in CSR in marketing. In particular, they propose a series of steps to guide managers who wish to implement CSR (Maignan et al., 2005). One of the most critical steps in their implementation for the current paper is one that is designed to assist managers in "understanding the nature of the main issues of concern" to stakeholders (p. 969). Specifically, they call for firms to use not only existing knowledge about stakeholders, but to also conduct panel discussions and exploratory research to uncover stakeholder perceptions about CSR, and how the firm can respond. Similarly, Crane and colleagues (2004) conceptualize stakeholders in citizenship terms, and argue that they can hold corporations accountable in much the same way as citizens in a democracy do, making an understanding of the priorities of stakeholder and important aspect of firm' licenses to operate within society.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a comprehensive research project that elicited the opinions of thought leaders in the CSR arena to provide insight into not only where CSR expectations currently lie with a range of stakeholders, but what issues will emerge in the coming years to drive the agenda. Therefore, our research is important to managers working in this area who seek to actively manage a range of stakeholder expectations simultaneously. Our research is also important for researchers insofar as it defines the pressing CSR issues, outlined by stakeholder groups, for the coming decade.

The paper is organized according to each stakeholder group. First, a brief review of the extant literature on the stakeholder group as it relates to CSR is presented. Next, results from qualitative research data generated through interviews with 47 CSR "thought leaders" - individuals who are leaders in the CSR field including business executives, advisors to corporations, legislators, NGO representatives, social investment advisors, consumer advocates and academic researchers. Managerial implications are then discussed.

STAKEHOLDERS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

This section outlines the findings from our research, as well as a brief overview of the extant literature for each stakeholder group. A discussion of the research methodology is given first, followed by a summary of each group - consumers, NGOs, employees, investors, and the supply chain. These stakeholders mirror the primary stakeholders as outlined by Waddock (2002), with the exception of NGOs which were added as they emerged as a significant stakeholder group through participant interviews.

Methodology

Because the objective was to identify emerging themes in CSR across a range of stakeholders, and specific a priori themes were not developed, interviews were conducted (McCracken, 1988). Initial interviews were largely unstructured in an attempt to uncover themes and concepts central to the research objective. Importantly, no definition of CSR was provided to participants, although CSR was largely understood to mean the integration of social and environmental values throughout a company's operations and the engagement of stakeholders in this exercise. For many participants the term CSR is interchangeable with Sustainable Development (SD). Subsequent interviews were then guided by previous ones and became more structured in order to probe themes identified in preceding interviews. In addition to transcripts from the interviews, the researchers' notes from the interviews and subsequent debriefing sessions were examined to identify emerging themes.

The sample was purposive, beginning initially with recognized experts in the field of CSR. Snowball sampling was employed as initial participants then referred additional CSR experts, for a total of 47 participants. Fourteen were from the UK, 18 from Canada, 8 the US, and one each were from the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Belgium, Australia and Italy. The majority were CSR "advisors" (15), the rest were in Finance and Investment (7), Business - with some overlap with Finance (7), Academic (6), Stakeholder (5), Polling, Media and Commentators (3) and Government (2). A summary of the research participants is provided in Table 1.

Consumers

Consumers are arguably the most studied stakeholder group in the literature examining CSR. This is perhaps due to the fact that CSR is often associated with the marketing function of the firm (Brammer and Millington, 2003), and the expectation of increased revenue is a quid pro quo for "good deeds" is a significant assumption behind the business case argument for CSR. Indeed, the bias in examinations of the business case behind CSR focus on the potential for incremental gain as opposed to cost reduction (Peloza, 2006).

Although