Companies’ responsibility beyond just making profit has been given extra focus in recent years. The debate on whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a choice or a necessity for global companies made us interested in the subject and the research on how companies actually deal with the issues. The implementation of CSR within an organization is an important element for companies today.

The purpose of our dissertation was to identify and explore the different steps in the CSR implementation process, with the intention to create an alternative CSR implementation model that could be utilized by organizations as guidelines when implementing CSR within their organization. Primarily a theoretical review was conducted and a CSR implementation model was created. From this model nine propositions were developed and tested in our empirical analysis.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three Swedish companies and one CSR expert.

The main findings show that the CSR implementation process is a complex process that needs to be integrated in every part of the organization and in the daily activities in order to be successful. The CSR implementation process should also be seen as an ongoing and never-ending process, rather than a strategy implementation with an evident beginning and ending.