Active, Reactive, and Proactive Approaches to Corporate Volunteering in Three Countries

This article explores discursive constructions of corporate volunteering (CV) across three countries. Based on the analysis of 29 qualitative interviews with employees working in small and medium size companies in Denmark, Slovenia, and the United States, we explore distinct discursive features of the embedded nature of CV in the broader context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The findings reveal that different orientations to CSR inform and shape the ways participants working in the three countries construct CV as active, reactive, or proactive corporate practice. This study aids in understanding of the cross-cultural distinctiveness of discourses that pertain to CV from an employee perspective, while also challenging the common notion of CV as an aspect of strategic CSR.