Incorporating corporate social responsibility in strategic planning: case of ship-operating companies

Recent years have seen renewed and growing interest in the social and environmental impacts of shipping due to pressing global problems such as climate change and social unrest. As such, shipping companies have turned towards adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper firstly aims to analyse the problems faced by ship‐operating companies when trying to implement CSR. Through a survey conducted among Singapore‐registered ship‐operating companies, it was found that high cost and lack of support from employees are common problems faced and these were results of unexpected changes in the business environment, lack of planning and lack of understanding from stakeholders. By developing solutions to the problems and bridging the gaps in the literature, another aim of the study is to develop a framework by which ship‐operating companies can adopt to incorporate CSR into their strategic planning. Various strategic planning techniques including situational, stakeholder and value‐chain analyses are used within this framework.