A company announces that it will buy more responsibly. Then a freight contract comes up for renewal, and the procurement team is still expected to pick the lowest bid. The rule for awarding the contract will determine how much the commitment counts. A corporate social responsibility (CSR) program built around employee awareness can leave rules like that untouched. Behavioral science starts with the decisions that affect the outcome and asks what it would take for the people making them to choose differently.

Where does a CSR strategy become a business decision?

In a review of 122 empirical studies, Fatima and Elbanna (2023) describe CSR implementation as work that happens at several levels of an organization. Their framework connects leadership’s commitments with the way teams put them into practice and evaluate the results. An emissions target gives the company a direction. What happens next depends on the people who write bid specifications, plan shipments, or approve capital spending, and on the rules they use to make those calls.

Start with the impact the company wants to reduce. If freight accounts for most of its transportation emissions, look at how dispatchers choose between shipping an order immediately and consolidating it with others. How much that decision matters depends on how often it comes up, how much freight it affects, and what changes when the team chooses one option. If the delivery date promised to the customer makes consolidation impossible, the decisive choice happened earlier, when the order was placed.

The same logic applies to labor practices. A buyer might ask a supplier to give its workers more predictable schedules while repeatedly changing orders at the last minute. If a rush order forces the supplier to rearrange shifts, the buyer has a decision to examine inside its own company. Who approved the change, and how much notice did the supplier’s team actually get?

How can responsible sourcing criteria carry weight in a bid?

In three scenario-based experiments, Zhan and colleagues (2021) varied the economic, environmental, and social characteristics of suppliers presented to supply chain managers. All three dimensions influenced how managers evaluated the suppliers and whom they said they would choose. Economic factors carried the most weight. The study measured responses to hypothetical bids. In an actual procurement, buyers need to know how each criterion will be verified and how much it will count before they compare bids.

Imagine a request for proposals (RFP) for a freight contract. Each carrier submits an emissions estimate, but the estimates cover different routes. The scorecard has a column for CO₂, yet the figures are hard to compare. Price is easy to compare and ends up deciding who wins. If the request for proposals specifies the same routes, shipment volumes, and service levels for every bidder, the committee can compare estimated emissions for the freight it will actually move.

The committee also needs to know which requirements are mandatory. A company might require carriers to show how they check that subcontractors give drivers the required rest time. Once bids clear that threshold, the committee can weigh the differences in cost and emissions. Setting the rules before the RFP goes out tells bidders what evidence to submit and gives the committee a basis for explaining the award.

What does the research say about changing workplace behavior?

Brack et al. (2026) pooled 52 studies and found a small-to-moderate positive average effect of workplace interventions on pro-environmental behavior. Information, feedback on current practices, and changes to the physical work environment all showed positive average effects. Results varied substantially across studies. A clear instruction can help when people are unsure what to do. When the preferred option exists only on paper, the question is whether people can use it when the decision comes up.

Gosnell, List, and Metcalfe (2020) studied fuel-saving practices among 335 Virgin Atlantic captains. One practice was shutting down an engine while taxiing after landing when conditions allowed. The share of flights on which captains used the practice was nearly 10 percentage points higher in the group that received performance feedback and personalized targets than in the comparison group, whose captains knew they were being monitored. The researchers also used the fuel savings to estimate avoided CO₂ emissions. The study connects a change in how people did the job with a change in how much fuel they used.

How does UNREST’s MEET method work for CSR?

“Buy responsibly” leaves buyers to decide what the company expects of them. A more specific practice is for the committee to compare estimated emissions across qualifying bids before recommending a carrier. The COM-B model developed by Michie, van Stralen, and West (2011) helps identify what might get in the way. Can committee members interpret the estimates? Do they receive comparable figures in time? Will the procurement lead back a higher-priced bid if their performance is judged mainly on immediate savings? The answers point to different changes, from the bid scorecard to the way the company evaluates its buyers.

In UNREST’s MEET method, the team starts with Model. It reconstructs recent bids to see what the committee knew when it made the award and which criteria drove the choice. In Engineer, it addresses what made comparison difficult. In Experiment, it pilots the new practice in one purchasing category against criteria agreed on in advance. If the results support expanding the practice, Transfer means writing it into procurement procedures and checking whether teams use it in later bids.

Outside procurement, the starting point depends on who makes the decision and when. In business travel, that may be when a manager approves an exception to the travel policy. In capital spending, the decision starts to take shape when the committee specifies what a proposal must include. Where to start depends on which outcome the company needs to improve.

Decision Practice to test Practice and outcome to track
Select a freight carrier Before awarding the contract, the committee compares emissions estimates based on the same shipments and checks bids against the contract’s labor requirements. Share of bid reviews with a comparison before the award. Once the contract starts, track estimated total emissions and emissions per metric ton of freight.
Book a business trip The person booking compares rail and air where both are practical. If company policy favors rail, they document the reason for an exception. Share of eligible bookings with a comparison before purchase, share of trips taken by rail, and estimated total emissions from the trips covered by the policy.
Approve capital spending When approving an investment to expand capacity, the committee compares expected lifetime energy use for options that meet the same operational need. Share of proposals with a comparison the committee can use. Once the investment is in service, track total energy use and energy use per unit of output or service delivered.
Change a purchase order Before approving a late change, the buyer checks with the supplier how much notice its workers will have. Share of late changes reviewed with the supplier. Track how much notice workers received and any resulting shift changes the supplier can document.

How do you connect a change in practice to its impact?

In procurement, one behavioral indicator is the share of bid reviews in which the committee compared emissions before choosing a carrier. Include every bid review covered by the rule. An estimate added after the award documents the purchase but comes too late to inform the choice. Dated scorecards and meeting records help the CSR team see what information the committee had and whether it used it.

Once the contract is in operation, the team can estimate emissions from activity data such as distance traveled, freight volume, or fuel use, using consistent emission factors. Emissions per metric ton of freight help show whether operations have become more efficient. Total emissions tell you what happened overall. If the company moves more freight, the total can rise even as emissions per metric ton fall.

A pilot also needs to capture consequences that would change the rollout decision. A team testing shipment consolidation tracks late deliveries and any express shipments needed to catch up. Comparing the pilot with a similar operation still using the old process, or rolling out the change in stages, helps separate the effect of the pilot from a shift in freight volume. The same logic applies to labor commitments. A notice period in a contract matters when the supplier actually receives orders early enough to plan staffing.

Which decision should you start with?

The CSR lead knows the outcome the company is aiming for. The operations lead knows how the decisions behind that outcome get made. Reviewing a few recent decisions together can show where the preferred option dropped out of consideration. UNREST’s CSR advisory work starts there, with a change the people involved can test. If emissions estimates reach the committee after it awards the contract, start with the person who sets the information requirements for bids.

Frequently asked questions

Is a nudge enough to put a CSR policy into practice?

A nudge helps when the preferred option is already workable. A travel booking tool can show rail first on routes where it meets the trip’s requirements. If rail still takes an extra approval and a flight can be booked immediately, the travel manager also has an approval rule to revisit.

Does behavioral science apply to the social side of CSR?

Yes. A company working to improve equal opportunity can examine who gets assignments that count toward promotion. Those decisions often happen at project kickoff, well before a promotion review. Looking at who gets considered for those assignments connects CSR to the decisions that shape diversity and inclusion at work.

How does this relate to sustainability reporting?

Sustainability reporting documents outcomes across the organization. Studying behavior helps explain how those outcomes came about. If business travel emissions fall, booking records can show whether people took fewer trips or switched to another way of traveling. That gives the company something specific to investigate before deciding whether to continue the intervention.

References

Fatima, T., & Elbanna, S. (2023). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Implementation: A Review and a Research Agenda Towards an Integrative Framework. Journal of Business Ethics, 183, 105–121. 10.1007/s10551-022-05047-8.

Zhan, Y., Chung, L., Lim, M. K., Ye, F., Kumar, A., & Tan, K. H. (2021). The Impact of Sustainability on Supplier Selection: A Behavioural Study. International Journal of Production Economics, 236, 108118. 10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108118.

Brack, F., Petrowsky, H. M., Hörisch, J., & Loschelder, D. D. (2026). Workplace Interventions to Promote Employees’ Pro-Environmental Behaviour: A Meta-Analysis. Human Resource Management Journal. 10.1111/1748-8583.70066.

Gosnell, G. K., List, J. A., & Metcalfe, R. D. (2020). The Impact of Management Practices on Employee Productivity: A Field Experiment with Airline Captains. Journal of Political Economy, 128(4), 1195–1233. 10.1086/705375.

Michie, S., van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The Behaviour Change Wheel: A New Method for Characterising and Designing Behaviour Change Interventions. Implementation Science, 6, 42. 10.1186/1748-5908-6-42.

About the author

Maxime Rabéchault is the founder and president of UNREST, a change enablement consultancy. He applies behavioral science to help organizations change how they work.