Governing Corporations in National and Transnational Spaces: Cross-Level Governmental Orchestration of Corporate Social Responsibility in South Korea

The loose spatial and temporal coordination of national and transnational governmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies enables multinational corporations (MNCs) to externalize irresponsible behaviours. Political CSR (PCSR) and ‘government and CSR’ studies show how governmental authority shapes CSR at the domestic and transnational levels but provide only limited insights into how to govern MNCs across levels and over time. Combining the concept of orchestration with insights from power transition theory, we theorize cross-level governmental orchestration as power-imbued, dynamic, and involving multiple modes of orchestration. Through an analysis of how the South Korean state has deployed CSR domestic and transnational strategies over 30 years, we induce three configurations of cross-level governmental orchestration, blending coercive, directive, delegative and facilitative modes of orchestration, and identify the mechanisms behind Korea's transition from one configuration to another. Our results: (1) contribute to PCSR and ‘government and CSR’ studies by conceptualizing a systemic and dynamic view of cross-level orchestration of governmental CSR strategies; (2) advance transnational governance studies by consolidating orchestration theories and considering coercive power, and (3) add to power transition theory by explaining how regulatory capacity-building enables shifts of cross-level orchestration configurations.