The purpose of this study is to explore whether tour operators work with CSR within their organizations in Mexico, and describe how they implement it as well as why they work with it.
Furthermore, the paper will analyze similarities and differences between the Swedish and Mexican tour operator’s CSR strategies as well as the reasons for this. Lastly, recommendations will be made to the Mexican tour operators on how they can gain knowledge from Swedish tour operators on CSR strategies and the development of these.
The theoretical framework contains descriptions of theories on strategy, competitive advantage, the CSR Pyramid, stakeholder theory as well as CSR in the context of developing countries, which are all relevant theories for the issue studied as well as for answering the research questions. The empirical findings that have been collected through interviews with two Swedish, and two Mexican tour operators address the respective tour operator’s work with CSR in Mexico. In the analysis the theoretical framework has been put in relation to the empirical evidence.
In the analysis consists of how and why CSR activities are implemented in the respective organization. It also addresses the difficulties tour operators from developed countries face when implementing CSR on destinations in developing countries.
Lastly, our conclusions show that there are several ways of implementing CSR in developing countries, as well as different views on why taking social responsibility within the tourism industry is important. Moreover, the main reason for this divergence lies in different perspectives, which has also been shown to be a contributing factor to the challenges faced by Swedish tour operators in the context of a developing country.
Source: Linnaeus University
Authors: Adams, Nathalie | Chyssler, Louise