U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

  • Publications
  • Account settings
  • Advanced Search
  • Journal List
  • Front Psychol

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Sustainable Innovation: A Case in China’s Heavy Pollution Industry

1 School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China

2 The Institute of Low Carbon Operations Strategy for Beijing Enterprises, Beijing, China

Xiaoning Zhu

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Exploring the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment and disclosure on enterprises’ sustainable innovation capacity can not only expand the research boundary of factors of sustainable innovation and the impact of CSR, but it can also serve as a reference for the decision-making of listed companies in increasing pollution problems. Using a sample of 224 Chinese A-share businesses in the heavy pollution industry listed between 2016 and 2020 and employing an ordinary least square regression, the results provide empirical evidence that CSR is positively associated with sustainable innovation. Second, the business environment can serve as a moderator of the relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation, and the positive relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation is more pronounced in regions with better macroeconomic conditions. Additionally, the improvement of CSR for sustainable innovation is more clear in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned enterprises. After a series of robustness tests that eliminate marketization, law enforcement, and macro-political unpredictability, the results still hold. This study broadens the scope of CSR and sustainable innovation research. In addition, the theoretical and practical significance of this study’s findings is referenced in this paper.

Introduction

Environmental and climate concerns caused by the intensification of global industrialization are irreversible. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a successful approach that encourages businesses to take on additional duties to support social and sustainable development, given the growing consensus in modern global business on the value of sustainable development ( Bauman and Skitka, 2012 ). Innovation is one of the primary drivers of boosting sustainability development ( Silvestre and Neto, 2014 ) and positively impact green performance ( Sharma et al., 2021 ). Scholars pay close attention to the expanding literature on CSR and sustainable innovation ( Shakeel et al., 2020 ).

Economy ( Al-Hadi et al., 2019 ), legislation ( Lau et al., 2018 ), morality ( Mikulka et al., 2020 ), society, and the environment should be firms’ primary responsibilities ( Amor-Esteban et al., 2019 ). It highlights that CSR is not only to fully consider stakeholders and execute the comprehensive social contract but also to increase economic performance ( Cho et al., 2019 ) while assuming environmental obligations. In recent years, there have been many forms of studies on CSR’s influence and influence elements. National culture and corporate governance ( Garcia-Sanchez et al., 2016 ; Mohamed Adnan et al., 2018 ), social media ( Grygiel and Brown, 2019 ), ethics ( Galvão et al., 2019 ; Smith et al., 2021 ), corporate reputation, and customer satisfaction ( Li et al., 2019 ; Yu and Liang, 2020 ; Bogdan et al., 2021 ), corporate integrity culture ( Wan et al., 2020 ; Khan et al., 2022 ). Sustainability strategy, performance, stakeholders, developing nations, climate change, and supply chain management are the research keywords for CSR ( Ye et al., 2020 ). An innovative and sustainable organization respects the environment’s capacity to support and protect its ecosystem’s resources while pursuing economic efficiency ( Severo et al., 2017 ). The research model incorporated CSR as the direction of future development, and sustainable innovation aimed at the environment can boost the economic and environmental performance of businesses ( Ahmad et al., 2021 ).

As a fundamental aspect of sustainable development, the importance of sustainable innovation is self-evident ( Silvestre and Ţîrcă, 2019 ). Prior research shows the connection between people, businesses, and creativity. Environmental sustainability has actively supported the innovation of sustainable business practices ( Shahzad et al., 2020 ). Higher enterprise innovation success is associated with greater CSR ( Wu et al., 2018 ). In recent years, however, there have been few studies on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. Based on social capital and stakeholder theories, CSR impacts innovation performance in an inverted U-shape. The direction of CSR’s influence on innovation may vary among industries ( Liu et al., 2021 ). The association between sustainable innovation and CSR, therefore, requires additional study. Additionally, from an industry perspective, businesses in different industries require different fundamental resources for innovation; therefore, CSR data must be distinguished according to the industry in the study. Existing literature focuses mostly on the fashion sector ( Arrigo, 2013 ), the semiconductor business ( Lu et al., 2013 ), the banking industry ( Istianingsih et al., 2020 ), and the energy industry ( Arrigo, 2013 ; Lu et al., 2013 , 2019 ; Istianingsih et al., 2020 ).

It is common knowledge that significantly polluting companies have a far greater detrimental influence on the ecological environment than others do ( Xie et al., 2022 ). Because of China’s large consumption of traditional fossil fuels, the country’s environmental quality has worsened significantly, attracting the international community’s utmost concern ( Dong et al., 2021 ). China is the largest manufacturing nation in the world. According to the China Statistical Yearbook 2021, 68% of total energy consumption is attributable to enterprises with elevated levels of pollution. To advance the aims of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutral,” more studies must be undertaken on industries with elevated levels of pollution. Since the reform and opening of China 40 years ago, China’s industry has boomed. The prior development, however, was overly reliant on energy and resource input and production scale expansion. China’s industrial expansion followed a broad pattern of growth, inflicting serious environmental and ecosystem harm ( Zhang J. et al., 2017 ). Traditional industries with high energy consumption, high emissions, and high pollutants will have a considerable influence on the environment. Innovation is one of the driving forces for China’s sustainable industrial development ( Yuan and Zhang, 2020 ). In recent years, China’s environmental rules and regulations have been increasingly stringent, and the sustainable development of China’s heavy pollution sectors has steadily become dependent on green development that considers innovation and environmental considerations. However, Fang et al. (2019) discovered in their research that heavy pollution sectors face the conundrum of “effective but not environmentally friendly innovation.” Consequently, it is vital to investigate further the performance of China’s heavy polluting sectors in terms of sustainable development.

This article picks Chinese A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2020 as its research object and empirically examines the impact of CSR on enterprises’ sustainable innovation capacity. The findings show that the output of green innovation considerably enhances business sustainability. Given the sustainable development of businesses, the following questions are posed in this study. How can CSR foster innovation and sustainability? Does the influence of CSR on the capacity for sustainable innovation vary by corporate environment? What is the state of CSR in the Chinese heavy polluting industry?

The following are the primary contributions of this work. First, it expands the literature on sustainable innovation and CSR, which contributes to the development of a fresh perspective for the study of the factors influencing the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses. Existing studies have investigated more CSR-influencing aspects, however, there remains a dearth of studies on CSR’s role. As opposed to undertaking a standard analysis at the firm or national level, this study focuses on publicly traded enterprises in China’s heavy pollution industry. This study can therefore serve as a substantial contribution to the research on the sustainable development of the heavy pollution sector and give theoretical support for the heavy pollution industry to realize its low-carbon transformation goals. Third, most previous research has ignored the societal dimensions of CSR in general ( Chen and Wan, 2020 ). In this study, the business environment is included as a moderating variable in the research model to investigate the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. The data passed the test for robustness. Thus, our findings may be useful to policymakers by identifying social normative force and illuminating how it drives businesses. Given that CSR has a significant impact on the interests of stakeholders, this study can also assist stakeholders in making more informed judgments about the sustainable innovation of businesses.

The organization of this investigation is as follows: The literature review and research hypotheses are provided in Section “Literature Reviews and Research Hypotheses”. The third section of this study describes the research design, including the variables, sample, and model selection. The section “Robustness Tests” consists of empirical analysis, findings reporting, and comments. Section “Conclusions and Policy Recommendations” highlights the theoretical and practical implications’ conclusions and policy recommendations.

Literature Reviews and Research Hypotheses

Sustainable innovation and csr.

According to the stakeholder theory, (CSR) entails that the development of businesses should include stakeholders, including employees, consumers, suppliers, and communities ( Turker, 2009 ). By adhering to principles of CSR, businesses can foster confidence and excellent connections with internal and external stakeholders and effectively drive innovation ( Lins et al., 2016 ).

Everything related to CSR can have a favorable effect on shareholder profitability ( Pucheta-Martínez and Gallego-Álvarez, 2021 ). CSR provides shareholders with economic profits, management and operational knowledge, and motivation to work on CSR. Shareholder-related CSR can increase shareholder confidence in innovative investment opportunities ( Iyer and Soberman, 2016 ). Employee-focused CSR can facilitate employee identification with the organization. When employees acknowledge a firm’s commitment to environmental sustainability, they encourage the organization to regard environmental preservation as a competitive advantage-enhancing opportunity ( Ernst and Jensen Schleiter, 2021 ). Enterprises boost social and environmental performance through pro-environment behavior and stimulate employees’ green behaviors, which has a favorable effect on employees’ innovative technology exploration ( Xu et al., 2022 ). Green human resource management may promote the sustainability of enterprises as an essential technique for influencing the green behavior of employees ( Amjad et al., 2021 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ). Employee green creativity is regarded as the driving force behind company green innovation, and employee green behavior is a crucial metric for measuring employee green creativity ( Jiang et al., 2020 ). Gaudencio et al. (2017) found that CSR increases employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment and has a beneficial effect on the establishment of a stable innovation team ( Ho, 2017 ). CSR receives greater attention the more optimistic the customer’s attitude. Customers like to buy products that perform well in terms of social responsibility ( Iyer and Soberman, 2016 ). Because of client desires, businesses produce added items through technological innovation. In addition, CSR can influence the behavior and selection of suppliers ( Kumar et al., 2014 ; Zhang M. et al., 2017 ; Govindan et al., 2018 ). Companies in a supply chain that apply CSR-related practices can enhance not just their performance, but also that of their supply chain partners ( Yang et al., 2020 ). Businesses may develop societal trust and a positive public image by engaging in CSR. Because of these factors, businesses can foster economic performance and innovative conduct.

Many researchers have conducted studies on sustainable innovation. Sustainable innovation is described as an innovation model with sustainable innovation goals in the creative development process ( Cagliano and Behnam, 2019 ). It exemplifies innovation that is advantageous for environmental quality improvement and social collaboration ( Zhang et al., 2022 ). The enterprises’ green innovation behavior can be considered the performance of sustainable innovation. Important to sustainable development, green innovation promotes innovative technology and concepts ( Liao et al., 2022 ). In addition to ensuring efficient resource usage and effective pollution reduction, the competitive advantage of green innovation rests in achieving optimal economic performance ( Fernando et al., 2019 ). Studies have shown that CSR can assist stakeholders in increasing their profitability and further promote green investment and pro-environment behavior, which is reflected in sustainable innovation’s success. Consequently, we suggest our initial hypothesis:

H1 : The output of CSR can significantly enhance the corporate sustainable innovation performance.

The Moderating Role of the Business Environment

Environment and resources limit the development and operation of heavy pollution industries, which are specialized sectors. In other words, high pollution businesses operate in an environment that is dynamic and constantly changing. Instead of operating in a vacuum, organizations are formed by their surroundings ( Harrison and Pelletier, 1998 ). The environment of an organization is its means of survival. Considered one of the aspects determining the sustainable performance of a corporation is the business environment ( Alqudah et al., 2021 ). The optimization of the business environment can foster technological innovation and enhance the product quality and technological level of businesses. In addition, the optimization of the market environment facilitates firm entry and enhances market rivalry, hence interesting incumbent enterprises to do technological research and development. The development of environmental technologies can foster sustainable innovation in industries with high pollution levels.

Based on the preceding study, the following is the second hypothesis:

H2 : The promotion effect of the output of CSR on sustainable innovation performance is more significant when the business environment is poor.

Materials and Methods

Sample selection and data sources.

This study focuses on the Chinese A-share firms involved in severe pollution industries from 2016 to 2020. Two thousand sixteen is the most recent year for which we have comprehensive data. Given that some data are unavailable at the time of this study, 2020 has been chosen as the conclusion date. The scope of sample selection refers to the CSMAR database and the classification standards of heavily polluting industries in The Guidelines for Environmental Information Disclosure of Listed Companies by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. To assure the validity of the empirical research, the sample is treated as follows. First, to avoid the influence of outliers, firms with anomalous financial status, ST, * ST, suspended listing, and delisting between 2016 and 2020 were omitted from this study. Second, we eliminate samples devoid of CSR and other variable values. Third, to prevent the influence of extreme values, we eliminate the samples from 2016-to 2020 for which the value of sustainable innovation is zero. The CSR statistics are from the social responsibility reports of HeXun Net-listed enterprises. The data on sustainable innovation comes from the National Intellectual Property Patent Database and the Green List of International Patent Classification maintained by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Other data sources include the China Statistical Yearbook, the China Environmental Statistical Yearbook, the annual reports of publicly traded enterprises, and the RESSET database.

Dependent Variable (Sustainable Innovation)

According to the current body of research, there are no accepted criteria for measuring the sustainable innovation of businesses. The patent data of an enterprise directly reflects its technological innovation accomplishments, and the number of patents can be used to gauge an enterprise’s innovation level ( Abraham and Moitra, 2001 ; Albino et al., 2014 ). This study selects patent applications for green inventions and green utility models as indicators of sustainable innovation.

Independent Variable (CSR)

The social responsibility assessment system of HeXun Net comprises fifty subdivision indicators. The entire system is based on shareholder responsibility, employee accountability, supplier, customer, consumer responsibility, environmental responsibility, and social responsibility. The findings represent CSR compliance and transparency.

Moderating Variable (Business Environment)

The business environment is selected as the moderating variable in this study. The concept of conducting business is derived from the World Bank’s Doing Business Report. The World Bank evaluates the business climate from a national and regional standpoint. This study requires more granular indicators for provincial regions. Consequently, this article utilizes the research on the evaluation index system of the business environment ( Yang and Wei, 2021 ) to objectively calculate the business environment index of the city where the firms are located. This index system comprises per capita GDP, average salary level, consumption rate, per capita fixed asset investment, and GDP growth rate as indicators and takes into consideration disparities in economic development level and human capital from the standpoint of the macroeconomic environment.

Control Variables

Drawing on the previous empirical research on CSR ( Ali and Frynas, 2017 ; Su, 2019 ; Chen and Wan, 2020 ; Wan et al., 2020 ), this study also selects control variables as follows: the size of the company (SIZE), price-to-book ratio (PB), profitability (LEV), return on total assets (ROA), years of establishment (AGE), cash flow (CASH), shareholding nature (SOE), managerial shareholding ratio (MSH), board independence (INDEP), and duality (DUAL).

The definitions and interpretations of all variables are shown in Table 1 .

Variable definitions.

Empirical Models

Based on the previous studies ( Chen and Wan, 2020 ; Chen and Ji, 2022 ; Liao et al., 2022 ; Xie et al., 2022 ), this study establishes Equation 1 and use the OLS regression method to investigate the impact of CSR on the sustainable innovation.

Results and Discussions

Descriptive statistics.

The variables’ descriptive statistics for the entire sample are presented in Table 2 . As shown in the table, the mean and median values are 1.887 and 1.0986, respectively, whereas the 25% levels and maximum CSR are 0.0000 and 8.9200, showing that there are considerable disparities in SI performance among the studied organizations. The mean and median CSR values are 24.7164 and 19.8650, respectively, while the minimum, 25%, 75%, and maximum CSR values are −11.7700, 15.3025, 26.4050, and 85.7700, indicating that the sampled organizations perform poorly on CSR. Both the capacity for sustainable innovation and performing CSR among the samples have a significant space for development. The 25% and 75% thresholds of ENVIR are 0.3833 and 0.5445, respectively, showing that the macroeconomic contexts in which the studied enterprises operate are distinct. The minimum and maximum CASH values are −7.7700 and 17.5900, respectively, indicating that there are significant variances in operational capability among the examined organizations. The mean for independent SOEs is 0.4375, meaning that 43.75% of the studied enterprises are government-owned. Moreover, there are significant variances in many sample parameters, such as SIZE, PB, LEV, ROA, and MSH, necessitating the inclusion of these control variables in this model. Table 2 additionally provides descriptive analysis results for other variables.

Descriptive statistics.

Correlation Analysis

The Pearson correlation coefficients between the variables are displayed in Table 3 . Consistent with hypothesis H1, the correlation study demonstrates that SI is significantly consistent with CSR at the 1% level, providing early evidence that corporate integrity culture is favorably associated with a firm’s CSR performance.

Correlation analysis of variables.

*** , ** , * represents the level of significance at 1, 5, and 10%, respectively.

In general, if the correlation coefficients between independent variables are less than or equal to 0.80, the model may not have significant multicollinearity issues. All correlation coefficients between independent variables in this model are less than 0.454. There is hence no multicollinearity issue. The findings of the univariate correlation analysis are shown above, and the results of the multivariate regression analysis will be presented below.

Multivariate Regression Results

Table 4 displays the findings of a multivariate regression on the effect of CSR e on sustainable innovation. Although the modified R2 (0.147) is insufficient, the F -value shows that the models as a whole are significant (18.506). Model (1)'s regression output comprises independent variables and control variables. CSR has a significantly positive impact on sustainable innovation (0.016, t  = 7.018), as shown in the table. This positive correlation implies that hypothesis H1 proposed in this paper’s research hypothesis section has been confirmed by the empirical study. The findings suggest that organizations that prioritize CSR fulfillment and disclosure have a greater capability for sustainable innovation. Since the existing research has identified the influencing factors of CSR, we choose several representative corporate management variables as control variables, and the regression results of the control variables in Model (1) are most consistent with expectations. Among the control variables, the SIZE, AGE, CASH, SOE, and INDEP regression coefficients are significantly positive. A greater number of independent directors, a larger asset size, a longer listing period, more asset liquidity, and more stable equity are all correlated with a higher ability for sustainable innovation. Significantly negative regression coefficients for PB can be observed. The lower the price-to-book ratio, the greater the company’s investment value and growth prospects, and hence its emphasis on sustainable innovation. Several research has previously investigated and proven the inherent positive impact of CSR, innovation, and sustainable development ( Silvestre and Ţîrcă, 2019 ; Sharma et al., 2021 ; Chen and Ji, 2022 ; Liao et al., 2022 ). This study’s findings are consistent with past research in this area. In addition, the data confirm the likelihood that CSR in various industries may have varied effects on sustainable innovation at various times ( Liu et al., 2021 ). This may owe to the various key resources utilized by various sectors. In the context of China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality objectives, firms in the heavy pollution industry that place a premium on CSR will prioritize their sustainable development and guide stakeholders to engage in sustainable innovation.

Regression results of sustainable innovation and CSR.

(1) T-values are reported in parentheses. (2) *** , ** , * represents the level of significance at 1, 5, and 10%, respectively.

The H2 hypothesis investigates the effect of the business environment on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. Before assessing the business environment moderating, we standardize the data. Table 4 displays the regression findings for Model (2). We derived varying business climate scores based on the location of the businesses. The business environment has a considerable impact on the interaction between sustainable innovation and CSR. The enhanced R2 of 0.203 indicates that the model has a better fitting effect. This positive correlation demonstrates that the empirical investigation has confirmed the hypothesis H2 proposed in the research hypothesis section of this work. Objectively, the business environment plays a moderating role. On the one hand, when businesses perform well in terms of CSR, a better macroeconomic climate can bring about greater investment possibilities and human capital to encourage the development of sustainable innovation capability. In contrast, when a business is in a location with a more favorable economic climate, market rivalry and government laws will encourage the business to adhere to CSR and prioritize sustainable development. When businesses are in regions with more favorable economic conditions, they are more likely to have easier access to capital, hence bolstering budgets for sustainable innovation. Consequently, the ability for sustainable innovation may increase. In addition, the coefficients and significance of other control variables in this model are consistent with expectations.

Robustness Tests

Controlling the effects of marketization and law enforcement.

In addition, we control for the effects of marketization and law enforcement, both of which may impact the CSR of local firms. For instance, Du et al. (2016) observed that the amount of law enforcement in an area has a considerable impact on the CSR performance of local businesses and that the enforcement of regulations varies greatly throughout Chinese provinces. Based on a prior study ( Wang et al., 2008 ; Chen and Wan, 2020 ), one should additionally evaluate a region’s marketization. We use the regional marketization index and the legal environment index in conjunction with prior research ( Wan et al., 2020 ) to assess the marketization process and regional law enforcement in China ( Fan et al., 2011 ). Table 5 displays the outcomes. We add the control variable MARKET to the regression model in column (1). In column (2), the control variable LAW is incorporated into the regression model. In column (3), both MARKET and LAW are included as control variables in the regression model. The results of the three models are comparable, showing that the influence of CSR on sustainable innovation remains positively significant. Therefore, the localization of the market for law enforcement has no bearing on our argument regarding the relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation. The empirical findings remain valid.

Controlling for the effects of marketization and law enforcement.

Exclusion of Alternative Explanations

Chen and Ji (2022) discovered that research results may only be confirmed during a period with a negative macro-political environment and fade during other eras. Therefore, it is essential to rule out this other explanation and re-evaluate our samples. In 2017, for instance, the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held. In addition, COVID-19 affected most of China in 2020. Both can be unpredictable macro-political environment elements. As a result, we choose the policy environment index ( Yang and Wei, 2021 ) as a proxy to measure the macro-political environment of a region. To facilitate comparisons, we divide our sample into two groups based on whether macro-political environment uncertainty is high or low and recalculate the regression results. The value of the policy environment index that is below the mean shows macro-political environment uncertainty, whereas a value above the mean indicates political environment uncertainty. The results presented in Table 6 for samples of high and low political uncertainty are consistent with those presented in prior tables. The macro-political environment does not affect our outcomes.

Exclusion for political uncertainty.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

In recent years, China has established the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, as well as intensified its efforts to change heavy polluting industries to promote energy saving, emission reduction, and sustainable growth. This research investigates the relationship between sustainable innovation and the CSR of China’s big polluters that are publicly traded. Exploring the impact of CSR on the sustainable innovation capacity of enterprises can not only broaden the scope of research on the impact mechanism of sustainable enterprises’ development capacity and the effect consequences of CSR but also serve as a guide for the decision-making of publicly traded companies in the heavy pollution industry. Based on the data of China’s A-share heavy pollution listed companies from 2016 to 2020, we evaluated the effect of CSR fulfillment and disclosure on green patent applications. Through a series of robustness tests, the results are unaffected by marketization, law enforcement, and macro-political unpredictability.

The outcomes reveal: (1) CSR significantly improves the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses and (2) when a business is in a region with a more favorable macroeconomic environment, the effect of CSR on sustainable innovation capacity is more pronounced. Additionally, the improvement of CSR for sustainable innovation is more clear in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned enterprises. CSR has a more favorable effect on sustainable innovation when the board is more independent. These results also indicate that the government and independent directors can serve as a check, a balance, and a supervisor to encourage stakeholders to prioritize CSR and promote sustainable innovation capacity from the sidelines, particularly in China’s heavy pollution industry.

Policy Recommendations

This study’s findings have the following implications for businesses, their managers, and legislators. In the first place, our empirical findings demonstrate that CSR greatly improves sustainable innovation potential. Therefore, corporate managers must acknowledge the significance of CSR. They should place a greater emphasis on the outcomes of sustainable innovation and realize the sustainable development of businesses through sustainable innovation. Due to the stimulation of macroeconomic environmental conditions, firms in the heavy polluting industry will pay greater attention to the fulfillment and disclosure of CSR and support the strengthening of their capacity for sustainable innovation. Currently, heavy polluting industries, particularly manufacturing, are shifting from China’s economically developed eastern areas to the economically depressed center and western regions. If the government does not prioritize local economic growth, it may negatively affect the local ecology. Moreover, by addressing internal governance characteristics, businesses can mitigate the detrimental impact of the regional transfer on sustainable innovation. Thirdly, green human resource management methods can improve the environmental performance and sustainability of businesses ( Roscoe et al., 2019 ; Bazrkar and Moshiripour, 2021 ). Incorporating sustainability measures into the human resource management system ( Sabokro et al., 2021 ) and recognizing the role of human resource management for the achievement of long-term sustainability in industrial development are therefore options for heavy pollution industries. In conclusion, businesses should integrate green and sustainable practices into their overall development plan.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study has limitations that necessitate more investigation. Due to the availability of data, this report only includes information from 2016 to 2020. Due to China’s ongoing efforts in energy saving and emission reduction during the past few years, results may vary over time. In addition, this article examined the impact of CSR on sustainable innovation from the standpoint of CSR. In future, we can also examine the effects of the many components of CSR. Lastly, the proportion of highly educated employees and research and development professionals might be viewed as elements that influence the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

XL: investigation, data curation, modeling and experiment. RY: methodology, supervision, and writing. XZ: review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 71802021, no. 71602008), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (no. 9184023), Beijing Municipal Education Commission Foundation (BJSJ2020001, BJSJ2019001, BJSJ2018009), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. FRF-BD-20-15A, no. FRF-BR-20-01C) and Beijing Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (no. 21JCC089).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

  • Abraham B. P., Moitra S. D. (2001). Innovation assessment through patent analysis . Technovation 21 , 245–252. doi: 10.1016/S0166-4972(00)00040-7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Ahmad N., Scholz M., AlDhaen E., Ullah Z., Scholz P. (2021). Improving Firm’s economic and environmental performance Through the sustainable and innovative environment: evidence from an emerging economy . Front. Psychol. 12 :651394. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651394, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Albino V., Ardito L., Dangelico R. M., Messeni Petruzzelli A. (2014). Understanding the development trends of low-carbon energy technologies: A patent analysis . Appl. Energy 135 , 836–854. doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.08.012 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Al-Hadi A., Chatterjee B., Yaftian A., Taylor G., Monzur Hasan M. (2019). Corporate social responsibility performance, financial distress and firm life cycle: evidence from Australia . Account. Finance 59 , 961–989. doi: 10.1111/acfi.12277 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Ali W., Frynas J. G. (2017). The role of normative CSR-promoting institutions in stimulating CSR disclosures in developing countries . Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 25 , 373–390. doi: 10.1002/csr.1466 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Alqudah H. E., Poshdar M., Oyewobi L., Rotimi J. O. B., Tookey J. (2021). Business environment, CRM, and sustainable performance of construction industry in New Zealand: a linear regression model . Sustain. For. 13 :13121. doi: 10.3390/su132313121 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Amjad F., Abbas W., Zia-Ur-Rehman M., Baig S. A., Hashim M., Khan A., et al.. (2021). Effect of green human resource management practices on organizational sustainability: the mediating role of environmental and employee performance . Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 28 , 28191–28206. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-11307-9, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Amor-Esteban V., Galindo-Villardón M.-P., García-Sánchez I.-M., David F. (2019). An extension of the industrial corporate social responsibility practices index: new information for stakeholder engagement under a multivariate approach . Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 26 , 127–140. doi: 10.1002/csr.1665 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Arrigo E. (2013). Corporate responsibility management in fast fashion companies: the gap Inc. case . J. Fash. Mark. Manag. 17 , 175–189. doi: 10.1108/JFMM-10-2011-0074 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Bauman C. W., Skitka L. J. (2012). Corporate social responsibility as a source of employee satisfaction . Res. Organ. Behav. 32 , 63–86. doi: 10.1016/j.riob.2012.11.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Bazrkar A., Moshiripour A. (2021). Corporate practices of green human resources management . Foresight STI Gov. 15 , 97–105. doi: 10.17323/2500-2597.2021.1.97.105 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Bogdan M., Cristina B., Simona G. (2021). The relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in Romanian companies . Econ. Comput. Econ. Cybern. Stud. 55 , 297–314. doi: 10.24818/18423264/55.3.21.19 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Cagliano R., Behnam S. (2019). Are innovation resources and capabilities enough to make businesses sustainable? An empirical study of leading sustainable innovative firms . Int. J. Technol. Manag. 79 , 1–20. doi: 10.1504/IJTM.2019.10016975 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Chen S., Ji Y. (2022). Do corporate social responsibility categories distinctly influence innovation? A Resource-Based Theory Perspective . Sustainability 14 :3154. doi: 10.3390/su14063154 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Chen X., Wan P. (2020). Social trust and corporate social responsibility: evidence from China . Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 27 , 485–500. doi: 10.1002/csr.1814 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Cho S., Chung C., Young J. (2019). Study on the relationship between CSR and financial performance . Sustain. For. 11 :343. doi: 10.3390/su11020343 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Dong F., Zhang Y., Zhang X., Hu M., Gao Y., Zhu J. (2021). Exploring ecological civilization performance and its determinants in emerging industrialized countries: A new evaluation system in the case of China . J. Clean. Prod. 315 :128051. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128051 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Du X., Du Y., Zeng Q., Pei H., Chang Y. (2016). Religious atmosphere, law enforcement, and corporate social responsibility: evidence from China . Asia Pac. J. Manag. 33 , 229–265. doi: 10.1007/s10490-015-9441-0 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Ernst J., Jensen Schleiter A. (2021). Organizational identity struggles and reconstruction During organizational change: narratives as symbolic, emotional and practical glue . Organ. Stud. 42 , 891–910. doi: 10.1177/0170840619854484 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Fan G., Wang X. L., Zhu H. P., (2011). NERI Index of Marketization of China’s Provinces 2011 Report. Beijing: Economic Science Press. [ Google Scholar ]
  • Fang Z., Bai H., Bilan Y. (2019). Evaluation research of green innovation efficiency in China’s heavy polluting industries . Sustain. For. 12 :146. doi: 10.3390/su12010146 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Fernando Y., Chiappetta Jabbour C. J., Wah W.-X. (2019). Pursuing green growth in technology firms through the connections between environmental innovation and sustainable business performance: does service capability matter? Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 141 , 8–20. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.09.031 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Galvão A., Mendes L., Marques C., Mascarenhas C. (2019). Factors influencing students’ corporate social responsibility orientation in higher education . J. Clean. Prod. 215 , 290–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.059 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Garcia-Sanchez I.-M., Cuadrado-Ballesteros B., Frias-Aceituno J.-V. (2016). Impact of the institutional macro context on the voluntary disclosure of CSR information . Long-Range Plan. 49 , 15–35. doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2015.02.004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Gaudencio P., Coelho A., Ribeiro N. (2017). The role of trust in corporate social responsibility and worker relationships . J. Manag. Dev. 36 , 478–492. doi: 10.1108/JMD-02-2016-0026 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Govindan K., Shankar M., Kannan D. (2018). Supplier selection is based on corporate social responsibility practices . Int. J. Prod. Econ. 200 , 353–379. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.09.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Grygiel J., Brown N. (2019). Are social media companies motivated to be good corporate citizens? Examination of the connection between corporate social responsibility and social media safety . Telecommun. Policy 43 , 445–460. doi: 10.1016/j.telpol.2018.12.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Harrison E. F., Pelletier M. A. (1998). Foundations of strategic decision effectiveness . Manag. Decis. 36 , 147–159. doi: 10.1108/00251749810208931 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Ho C.-W. (2017). Does practicing CSR makes consumers Like your shop more? Consumer-retailer love mediates CSR and behavioral intentions . Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 14 :1558. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14121558, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Istianingsih T., Trireksani T., Manurung D. T. H. (2020). The impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on the future earnings response coefficient (ASEAN banking analysis) . Sustain. For. 12 :9671. doi: 10.3390/su12229671 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Iyer G., Soberman D. A. (2016). Social responsibility and product innovation . Mark. Sci. 35 , 727–742. doi: 10.1287/mksc.2015.0975 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Jiang H., Wang K., Lu Z., Liu Y., Wang Y., Li G. (2020). Measuring green creativity for employees in green enterprises: scale development and validation . Sustain. For. 13 :275. doi: 10.3390/su13010275 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Khan F. U., Trifan V. A., Pantea M. F., Zhang J., Nouman M. (2022). Internal governance and corporate social responsibility: evidence from Chinese companies . Sustain. For. 14 :2261. doi: 10.3390/su14042261 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Kumar D. T., Palaniappan M., Kannan D., Shankar K. M. (2014). Analyzing the CSR issues behind the supplier selection process using ISM approach . Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 92 , 268–278. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.02.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Lau A., Lee S., Jung S. (2018). The role of the institutional environment in the relationship between CSR and operational performance: an empirical study in Korean manufacturing industries . Sustain. For. 10 :834. doi: 10.3390/su10030834 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Li F., Morris T., Young B. (2019). The effect of corporate visibility on corporate social responsibility . Sustain. For. 11 :3698. doi: 10.3390/su11133698 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Liao Y., Qiu X., Wu A., Sun Q., Shen H., Li P. (2022). Assessing the impact of green innovation on corporate sustainable development . Front. Energy Res. 9 :800848. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.800848 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Lins K. V., Servaes H., Tamayo A. M. (2016). Social capital, trust, and firm performance: The value of corporate social responsibility during the financial crisis . J. Financ. 72 , 1785–1824. doi: 10.1111/jofi.12505 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Liu Y., Chen Y., Ren Y., Jin B. (2021). Impact mechanism of corporate social responsibility on sustainable technological innovation performance from the perspective of corporate social capital . J. Clean. Prod. 308 :127345. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127345 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Lu J., Ren L., Qiao J., Yao S., Strielkowski W., Streimikis J. (2019). Corporate social responsibility and corruption: implications for the sustainable energy sector . Sustain. For. 11 :4128. doi: 10.3390/su11154128 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Lu W.-M., Wang W.-K., Lee H.-L. (2013). The relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate performance: evidence from the US semiconductor industry . Int. J. Prod. Res. 51 , 5683–5695. doi: 10.1080/00207543.2013.776186 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Mikulka Z., Nekvapilová I., Fedorková J. (2020). The moral-value orientation—a prerequisite for sustainable development of the corporate social responsibility of a security organization . Sustain. For. 12 :5718. doi: 10.3390/su12145718 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Mohamed Adnan S., Hay D., van Staden C. J. (2018). The influence of culture and corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure: A cross country analysis . J. Clean. Prod. 198 , 820–832. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.057 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Pucheta-Martínez M. C., Gallego-Álvarez I. (2021). The role of CEO power on CSR reporting: The moderating effect of linking CEO compensation to shareholder return . Sustain. For. 13 :3197. doi: 10.3390/su13063197 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Roscoe S., Subramanian N., Jabbour C. J. C., Chong T. (2019). Green human resource management and the enablers of green organisational culture: enhancing a firm’s environmental performance for sustainable development . Bus. Strateg. Environ. 28 , 737–749. doi: 10.1002/bse.2277 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Sabokro M., Masud M. M., Kayedian A. (2021). The effect of green human resources management on corporate social responsibility, green psychological climate and employees’ green behavior . J. Clean. Prod. 313 :127963. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127963 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Severo E. A., Guimarães J. C. F. D., Dorion E. C. H. (2017). Cleaner production and environmental management as sustainable product innovation antecedents: A survey in Brazilian industries . J. Clean Prod. 142 , 87–97. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.090 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Shahzad M., Qu Y., Javed S. A., Zafar A. U., Rehman S. U. (2020). Relation of environment sustainability to CSR and green innovation: A case of Pakistani manufacturing industry . J. Clean Prod. 253 :119938. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119938 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Shakeel J., Mardani A., Chofreh A. G., Goni F. A., Klemeš J. J. (2020). Anatomy of sustainable business model innovation . J. Clean Prod. 261 :121201. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121201 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Sharma S., Prakash G., Kumar A., Mussada E. K., Antony J., Luthra S. (2021). Analysing the relationship of adaption of green culture, innovation, green performance for achieving sustainability: mediating role of employee commitment . J. Clean Prod. 303 :127039. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127039 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Silvestre B. S., Neto R. E. S. (2014). Capability accumulation, innovation, and technology diffusion: lessons from a base of the pyramid cluster . Technovation 34 , 270–283. doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2013.09.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Silvestre B. S., Ţîrcă D. M. (2019). Innovations for sustainable development: moving toward a sustainable future . J. Clean Prod. 208 , 325–332. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.244 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Smith N. M., Zhu Q., Smith J. M., Mitcham C. (2021). Enhancing engineering ethics: role ethics and corporate social responsibility . Sci. Eng. Ethics 27 , 28–21. doi: 10.1007/s11948-021-00289-7, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Su K. (2019). Does religion benefit corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Evidence from China . Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 26 , 1206–1221. doi: 10.1002/csr.1742 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Turker D. (2009). How corporate social responsibility influences organizational commitment . J. Bus. Ethics 89 , 189–204. doi: 10.1007/s10551-008-9993-8 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Wan P., Chen X., Ke Y. (2020). Does corporate integrity culture matter to corporate social responsibility? Evidence from China . J. Clean Prod. 259 :120877. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120877 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Wang Q., Wong T. J., Xia L. (2008). State ownership, the institutional environment, and auditor choice: evidence from China . J. Account. Econ. 46 , 112–134. doi: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2008.04.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Wu W., Liu Y., Chan T., Zhu W. (2018). Will green CSR enhance innovation? A perspective of public visibility and firm transparency . Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 15 :268. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15020268, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Xie Z., Wang J., Zhao G. (2022). Impact of green innovation on firm value: evidence from listed companies in China’s heavy pollution industries . Front. Energy Res. 9 :806926. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.806926 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Xu B., Gao X., Cai W., Jiang L. (2022). How environmental leadership boosts Employees’ green innovation behavior? A Moderated Mediation Model . Front. Psychol. 12 :689671. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689671, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Yang Y., Lau A. K. W., Lee P. K. C., Cheng T. C. E. (2020). The performance implication of corporate social responsibility in matched Chinese small and medium-sized buyers and suppliers . Int. J. Prod. Econ. 230 :107796. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107796 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Yang R., Wei Q. (2021). The impact of business environment on urban innovation capability: An empirical test based on mediating effect . W. Surv. Res. 10 , 35–43. doi: 10.13778/j.cnki.11-3705/c.2021.10.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Ye N., Kueh T.-B., Hou L., Liu Y., Yu H. (2020). A bibliometric analysis of corporate social responsibility in sustainable development . J. Clean. Prod. 272 :122679. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122679 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Yu S.-H., Liang W.-C. (2020). Exploring the determinants of strategic corporate social responsibility: an empirical examination . Sustain. For. 12 :2368. doi: 10.3390/su12062368 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Yuan B., Zhang Y. (2020). Flexible environmental policy, technological innovation and sustainable development of China’s industry: The moderating effect of environment regulatory enforcement . J. Clean. Prod. 243 :118543. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118543 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Zhang Z., Li L., Zhang H. (2022). A sustainable innovation strategy oriented toward complex product Servitization . Sustain. For. 14 :4290. doi: 10.3390/su14074290 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Zhang J., Liu Y., Chang Y., Zhang L. (2017). Industrial eco-efficiency in China: A provincial quantification using three-stage data envelopment analysis . J. Clean. Prod. 143 , 238–249. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.123 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Zhang M., Pawar K. S., Bhardwaj S. (2017). Improving supply chain social responsibility through supplier development . Prod. Plan. Control 28 , 500–511. doi: 10.1080/09537287.2017.1309717 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Zhu S., Wu Y., Shen Q. (2021). How environmental knowledge and green values affect the relationship between green human resource management and Employees’ green behavior: From the perspective of emission reduction . PRO 10 :38. doi: 10.3390/pr10010038 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
  • Open access
  • Published: 22 September 2017

Corporate sustainability and responsibility: creating value for business, society and the environment

  • Mark Anthony Camilleri   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1288-4256 1  

Asian Journal of Sustainability and Social Responsibility volume  2 ,  pages 59–74 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

84k Accesses

89 Citations

8 Altmetric

Metrics details

Today’s corporations are increasingly implementing responsible behaviours as they pursue profit-making activities. A thorosugh literature review suggests that there is a link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance. In addition, there are relevant theoretical underpinnings and empirical studies that have often used other concepts, including corporate citizenship, stakeholder management and business ethics. In this light, this contribution reports on how CSR is continuously evolving to reflect contemporary societal realities. At the same time, it critically analyses some of the latest value-based CSR constructs. This review paper puts forward a conceptual framework for corporate sustainability and responsibility. It suggests that responsible business practices create economic and societal value by re-aligning their corporate objectives with stakeholder management and environmental responsibility.

This research builds on the previous theoretical underpinnings of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda, including corporate social performance (Waddock and Graves 1997 , Griffin and Mahon 1997 , Wang and Choi 2013 ), stakeholder management (Freeman 1984 , Berman et al. 1999 , Carroll and Buchholtz 2014 ), corporate citizenship (Carroll 1998 , Maignan et al. 1999 , Fombrun et al. 2000 , Matten and Crane 2005 ), strategic CSR (Burke and Logsdon 1996 , Lantos 2001 , McWilliams et al. 2006 , Falck and Heblich 2007 ) and creating shared value (Camilleri 2017 , Porter and Kramer 2011 , 2014 , European Union 2011 , Elkington 2012 , Crane et al. 2014 ). Moreover, it reviews the corporate sustainability and responsibility perspectives (Van Marrewijk and Werre 2003 , Salzmann et al. 2005 , Montiel 2008 , Visser 2011 , Benn et al. 2014 ). Corporate sustainability and responsibility is increasingly being recognised as a concept that offers ways of thinking and behaving. This approach toward sustainable business has potential to deliver significant benefits to business, society and the environment.

The subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has continuously been challenged by those who want corporations to move beyond transparency, ethical behaviour and stakeholder engagement. Today, responsible behaviours are increasingly being embedded into new sustainable business models that are designed to meet environmental, societal and governance deficits. Although there are numerous theories and empirical analyses on CSR constructs (Carroll 1979 , Margolis and Walsh 2001 , McWilliams and Siegel 2001 , Fombrun 2005 , Wang and Choi 2013 , Strand et al. 2015 ), there is still scant theoretical research that links corporate sustainability with corporate social responsibility and environmental management. Therefore, this contribution aims at filling this academic gap by examining the conceptual developments of the “corporate sustainability and responsibility” notion. This review paper reiterates that that there is a business case for CSR as organizations can pursue profit-making activities (i.e. corporate sustainability). Businesses are encouraged to strategically re-align their products, services, and operations with responsible behaviors (Husted and Allen 2009 ). Strategic CSR outcomes may include responsible management of internal practices and forging relationships with external stakeholders. It is in the organizations’ interest to forge closer ties with the regulatory authorities and with their neighbouring communities. Responsible behaviours add value to the firm, society and the environment (Camilleri 2017 ). Therefore, businesses ought to utilize their skills, resources, and management capability that lead to social progress (see Beschorner 2014 , Porter and Kramer 2011 : 77). This is consistent with the expectation that much of CSR is developed in order to improve the firm’s image and reputation, possibly allowing it to differentiate its products in the market (Fombrun 2005 ).

The underlying objective of this research is to advance the corporate sustainability and responsibility concept. Hence, this contribution provides a critical analysis of the literature that has inevitably led to the conceptual development of this value-based construct. This research elaborates on the business case for CSR and the related stakeholder theory. It provides a logical link between them. Following relevant theoretical underpinnings, this review article also puts forward a conceptual model representing a graphical illustration of ‘corporate sustainability and responsibility’.

Literature review

  • Corporate social responsibility

The discussion on social responsibility grew in popularity and took shape during the 60s. Many authors have indicated that the CSR notion was a fertile ground for theory development and empirical analysis (McWilliams et al. 2006 ). However, the businesses’ way of thinking has changed dramatically since Levitt in 1958 (and Friedman in 1962) held that the companies’ only responsibility was to maximise their owners’ and shareholders’ wealth, rather than looking after societal (and environmental protection) issues. At the time, these corporations had considerable bargaining power, and their power called for responsibility (Davis 1960 ). Arguably, these businesses had responsibilities towards society beyond their economic and legal duties. In the 60s and 70s, the most important social movements included civil rights, women’s rights, consumers’ rights as well as environmental movements. The period was characterised as an issue era, where companies began noticing specific societal problems arising from social, environmental and community issues. There was a focus on philanthropy and a noticeable manifestation in charitable donations. The gifts in-kind have expanded to the groups representing the health and social services, culture, arts, and the community at large. In a book entitled, ‘Corporate Social Responsibilities’, Walton ( 1967 ) addressed many facets of CSR in society. He came up with several models for social responsibility as he underlined that CSR involved a degree of voluntarism, as opposed to coercion. Moreover, back then, the corporations were incurring discretionary costs for their CSR engagement (Walton 1967 ). Without doubt, the clarification of CSR’s meaning is a significant strand within the research agenda. Table  1 reports a list of concepts that have emerged from the CSR paradigm:

The CSR notion has developed as a rather vague concept of moral good or normative behaviour (Carroll 1991 ). This construct was described as a relativistic measure of ‘the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary expectations that society had of organizations at a given point of time’ (Carroll 1979 ). CSR tackled ‘social problem(s)’ to engender positive ‘economic benefit(s)’ to ensure ‘well paid jobs, and ... wealth’ (Drucker 1984 ). This was consistent with academia’s call toward corporate social performance (CSP). The CSP theory had evolved from previous theoretical approaches. CSP reconciled the importance of both corporate social responsibility and corporate social responsiveness (Carroll 1979 ). It also placed an emphasis on achieving better performance out of the socially-responsible initiatives. Many researchers have used the corporate social performance (CSP) construct to establish a definitive causal relationship between the firms that were doing good (CSP) and those doing well (Corporate Financial Performance, i.e. CFP) (Waddock and Graves 1997 , Orlitzky et al. 2003 , Margolis and Walsh 2001 ).

There were several unresolved theoretical debates about whether there was a clear link between CSP and financial performance. Despite certain controversies regarding the validity of some empirical findings, most studies have reported a positive relationship between the two (Waddock and Graves 1997 , Preston and O'bannon 1997 ). The working assumption of CSP research was that corporate social and financial performance were universally related. Yet, it may prove hard for businesses and academia to demonstrate how CSR could lead to tangible improvements in the firms’ bottom lines.

It may appear that there was no explicit statement that describes how socially responsible practices could possibly translate into specific results that affect the profit and loss account (Murillo and Lozano 2006 ). At times, the empirical research did not yield the desired results as the findings were mixed (McWilliams and Siegel 2001 ). Alternatively, they yielded inconsistent evidence (Vogel 2005 ). Some authors have argued that the CSP-CFP link was pointless, as they were unable to find a positive relationship between the responsible business and the firms’ performance. Alternatively, another pertinent research question was to determine whether corporate profitability could be a sufficient motive for the avoidance of irresponsible behaviours (Vogel 2005 ).

The business case for corporate social responsibility

CSR can be much more than a cost, a constraint, or a charitable deed. It is ‘a source of opportunity, innovation and competitive advantage’ (Porter and Kramer 2006 ). However, its successful implementation could be influenced by a variety of factors including the firm’s size, diversification, research and development and market conditions (McWilliams and Siegel 2001 ). Very often academic research tried to follow and capture trends in the broader societal debate on the businesses’ social responsibilities. For instance, CSR’s domains often include, commercial responsibility, ethical responsibility and social responsibility (Singh and Del Bosque 2008 ). One of the businesses’ commercial responsibilities is their continuous development of high quality products or services. Companies are also expected to be fair and truthful in their marketing communications, whist they promote their offerings to customers (Singh and Del Bosque 2008 ). Secondly, the ethical responsibility is concerned with the corporations fulfilling their obligations towards their shareholders, suppliers, distributors and other agents with whom they make their dealings. Their ethical responsibility includes safeguarding the human rights and the norms that are (not necessarily) defined in the law when carrying out business activities. The ethical principles in business relationships could have more priority over achieving superior economic performance for some responsible corporations (Singh and Del Bosque 2008 ). Hence, the other social responsibility domain focuses on philanthropic behaviours. In this case, businesses could allocate part of their budget to the natural environment, or toward social issues that favour the most vulnerable in society. This form of social responsibility supports the development of financing stewardship principles including corporate donations to charitable institutions, religious, sports, cultural and heritage activities. This latter perspective is concerned with improving societal well-being.

Other scholars examined innovation and the level of differentiation in the industry as moderators in the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance (Hull and Rothenberg 2008 ). A study reported that corporate social performance strongly affected financial performance in low-innovation firms and in industries with little differentiation (Hull and Rothenberg 2008 ). Ideally, social performance ought to be consistent over time and across stakeholder domains (Waddock and Graves 1997 , Johnson and Greening 1999 ). For example, job seekers are attracted by CSP and organizational ethics that mirror their own values (Turban and Greening 1997 , Jones et al. 2014 ). Hence, there is an opportunity that socially-responsible businesses could differentiate themselves from other companies. They may leverage their firm’s image relative to other organizations. Lozano ( 2015 ) held that external drivers for CSR include reputation, customer demands and their expectations, as well as regulation and legislation. His findings suggest that one of the CSP outcomes is to communicate the corporations’ commitment to socially-responsible and sustainability values that stakeholders share.

CSR can help to build reputational benefits, it enhances the firms’ image among external stakeholders and could lead to a favourable climate of trust and cooperation within the company (Camilleri 2014 ). The expenditures on CSR activities are typically intended as long- term investments that are likely to yield financial returns. Corporations “give back” to their constituencies because they believe it to be in their best financial interests to do so. Many authors held that CSR is a driver for innovation and economic growth. They believed that it will help the company to achieve a competitive advantage (Burke and Logsdon 1996 , Lantos 2001 , Sen et al. 2006 ) by deriving positive benefits for both societal stakeholders and for the responsible firms. Therefore, companies should devote their attention to CSR strategies which add value to the business and disregard others’ activities which do not add value to the business (Camilleri 2017 ). In this context, the corporate philanthropy should be deeply rooted in the firm’s competences and linked to its business environment (Porter and Kramer 2002 ). Thus, strategic CSR behaviours may lead to the creation of value for both business and society (Burke and Logsdon 1996 , Lantos 2001 , McWilliams et al. 2006 , Porter and Kramer 2011 ). Strategic CSR could increase the financial performance of businesses, it minimises their costs through better operational efficiencies, boosts the employee morale, creates job satisfaction and reduces the staff turnover, along with other benefits (Camilleri 2017 ).

  • Strategic CSR

CSR can bring a competitive advantage if there are appropriate relationships with multiple stakeholders. Therefore, it is in the interest of business to engage in ongoing communications and dialogue with employees, customers, marketplace and societal groups (Morsing and Schultz 2006 , Union 2016 , Bhattacharya et al. 2009 ). Businesses may also need to recognise the potential of building fruitful networks with key marketplace stakeholders, including suppliers, regulatory authorities and the community at large. These stakeholder relationships are needed to bring external knowledge sources, which may in turn enhance organizational skills and performance. Acquiring new knowledge must be accompanied by mechanisms for dissemination. Arguably, there is scope in sharing best practices, even with rival firms. It is necessary for the responsible businesses to realise that they need to work in tandem with other organizations to move the CSR agenda forward.

In the past, the stakeholder theory has demonstrated how businesses could develop long-term mutual relationships, with a wide array of stakeholders. The businesses’ closer interactions with stakeholders could be based on relational and process-oriented views (Godfrey 2005 ). Thus, many firms are already forging strategic alliances in their value chain to run their businesses profitably. Many multinational corporations including Nestlé, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, and Wal-Mart have embraced the ‘shared value’ approach (Porter and Kramer 2011 , Union 2011 , Camilleri 2017 ). In many cases, they are building partnership and collaborative agreements with external stakeholders (including suppliers) hailing from different markets. The most successful businesses are increasingly promoting the right conditions of employment within their supply chains. They are instrumental in improving the lives of their suppliers (Porter and Kramer 2011 ). They do this as they would like to enhance the quality and attributes of their products, which are ultimately delivered to customers and consumers. They have economic responsibilities toward their owners and shareholders (Godfrey et al. 2009 , Desai and Dharmapala 2009 ). Many businesses do not always pay their fair share of taxes to government. Alternatively, they may be accused of not providing the right conditions of employment, or they may even pay lousy wages to their employees (Trejo 1997 ).

Some commentators on the subject of CSR often suggested that the factors that should contribute towards creating value in business and society are often qualitative in nature, and that there are variables that may prove very difficult to measure and quantify, such as, employee morale, corporate image, reputation, public relations, goodwill, and popular opinion (Maignan et al. 1999 , Fombrun et al. 2000 ). Therefore, any discretionary expenditure on altruistic or strategic CSR activities may be regarded as long-term investments that are likely to yield financial returns (McWilliams et al. 2006 , Falck and Heblich 2007 ). Hence, corporate philanthropy, stewardship and cause-related marketing could be re-aligned with the businesses’ profit motives (Camilleri 2017 ). This perspective resonates very well with the agency theory (Eisenhardt 1989 ). In the past, scholars argued that the companies’ only responsibility was to maximise their owners’ and shareholders’ wealth (Levitt 1958 , Friedman 1970 ). Hence, companies were often encouraged to undertake CSR strategies which add value to their business and to disregard other activities which were fruitless. Moreover, at times, the fulfilment of philanthropic responsibilities could simultaneously benefit the bottom line (Lantos 2002 ). Although, it could be difficult to quantify the returns of responsible behaviours, relevant research has shown that those companies that practiced social and environmental responsibility did well by doing good, in the long run (Falck and Heblich 2007 , Porter and Kramer 2011 ). However, other research has shown that it was also possible to overspend on CSR activities (Camilleri 2017 , McWilliams and Siegel 2001 , Lantos 2001 ).

The corporate social responsibility, environmental and ethical behaviours could be triggered by genuine altruism and self-preservation (Hemingway and Maclagan 2004 , Van Marrewijk 2003 ). Some of the contributions on this topic suggest that corporate philanthropy should be deeply rooted in the firms’ competences and linked to their business environment (Porter and Kramer 2002 , Godfrey 2005 ). Many authors often referred to CSR’s core domains (economic, legal and ethical responsibilities) that were compatible and consistent with the relentless call for the business case of CSR (Carroll and Shabana 2010 , Vogel 2005 ). The ethical responsibilities demand that businesses ought to abide by moral rules that define appropriate behaviours within a particular society. Another category of corporate responsibility is related to discretionary, voluntary or philanthropic issues. Corporate philanthropy is a direct contribution by a corporation to a charity or cause, most often in the form of cash grants, donations and/or in-kind services (Kotler and Lee 2008 ). This category of social responsibility is totally dictated at the “discretion” of the organization as there are no laws or codified expectations that guide the corporations’ activities (Rasche et al. 2013 ).

Discretionary responsibilities include those business activities that are not mandated by law, and they are not expected from businesses in an ethical sense (Carroll 1979 ). Practically, some examples where organizations meet their discretionary responsibilities include, when they provide day-care centres for working mothers, by committing themselves to philanthropic donations, or by creating pleasant work place aesthetics (Carroll 1979 ). Evidently, the CSR approach had established a new way of doing business that has led to the creation of value (Porter and Kramer 2011 , Union 2011 , Wheeler et al. 2003 ) with a respectful and proactive attitude towards stakeholders (Freeman 1984 , Lantos 2001 ). The stakeholder theory provides opportunities to align business practices with societal expectations and sustainable environmental needs. The stakeholder relationships support the principle of inclusivity, as the business practitioners ought to strike a balance between the conflicting demands of different stakeholders. Inevitably, businesses need to reconcile disparate stakeholders’ wants and needs (e.g. employees, customers, investors, government, suppliers et cetera).

The CSR’s responsibilities include the obligations toward customers. The businesses maintain economic growth, and meet the consumption requirements in the market. This economic component of CSR represents the fundamental responsibility of businesses. Many firms produce goods and services and sell them at fair prices to customers (including other businesses). This will in turn allow them to make a legitimate profit and to pursue growth and competitiveness. The legal responsibilities of businesses imply that these entities must fulfil their economic mission within the extant framework of rules and regulatory parameters. This legal component recognises the firms’ obligations to obey the relevant laws in the countries where they are trading. Of course, it could prove hard to define and interpret the ethical responsibilities of businesses. This component is often referred to as a “grey area”, as it involves activities that are not necessarily mandated by law but may still entail certain organizational behaviours that are expected by society (Carroll 1979 ).

The economic, legal and ethical responsibilities of corporations are compatible with the business case for CSR (Carroll and Shabana 2010 ), as firms create value to society in the long term with a respectful and proactive attitude towards different stakeholders, including their human resources (Carroll 1991 ). Many commentators argued that the CSR agenda had potential to bring a new wave of social benefits as well as gains for the businesses themselves (Fombrun et al. 2000 , Porter and Kramer 2011 ) rather than merely acting on well-intentioned impulses or by reacting to outside pressures (Van Marrewijk 2003 ). Lozano ( 2015 ) indicated that leadership and the business case are the most important internal drivers for responsible companies. Thus, proper incentives may encourage managers ‘to do well by doing good’ (Falck and Heblich 2007 ). If it is a company’s goal to survive and prosper, it can do nothing better than to take a long-term view and understand that if it treats society well, society will return the favour. Companies could direct their discretionary investments to areas (and cost centres) that are relevant to them (Jamali 2007 , Gupta and Sharma 2009 ). The reconciliation of shareholder and other stakeholders addresses the perpetual relationship between business and society, at large.

The legitimate businesses’ response to the demands of stakeholders allow them to meet and even exceed legal, ethical, and public societal expectations (Carroll 1979 ). Therefore, CSR offers prospects for greater credibility and value added as it involves linking altruistic interventions with long-term strategic goals (Jamali 2007 ). Therefore, corporate philanthropic activities, including stewardship programmes could also create social value to the business practitioners themselves (Camilleri 2017 , Baron 2001 , Carroll and Shabana 2010 ). Certain CSR variables including voluntarism, centrality and visibility could possibly relate to value creation (Husted and Allen 2009 ). One would expect that greater voluntarism would lead to greater creation of value, particularly when CSR initiatives arise as the result of industry, tax, or regulatory constraints (Burke and Logsdon 1996 , Husted and Allen 2009 ). In a similar vein, the environmental regulation can also stimulate the innovation and competitiveness among firms (Orlitzky et al. 2011 ). The incorporation of multiple elements of competitive advantage increases the likelihood that a CSR initiative will succeed and create value for the firm (Burke and Logsdon 1996 ). There could be an optimal level of spending on CSR and environmental responsibility, as businesses are expected to continuously balance conflicting stakeholder interests for long term sustainability (Orlitzky et al. 2011 , Camilleri 2017 ).

Environmental sustainability and corporate sustainability

The term “sustainable development” has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from “Our Common Future”, also known as the Brundtland Report, that was published way back in 1987. A central contribution of this report was the intermittent link between human development and actions toward environmental responsibility for the benefit of future generations (Camilleri 2014 ). Thirty years ago, the sustainable development agenda necessitated empirical research data. Debatably, today academia is calling for more policy and concrete action. Many governments as well as businesses are changing their stance on sustainability as they are becoming more proactive rather than reactive on social and environmental issues. Porter and Kramer ( 2011 : 74) recommended that national governments could set performance standards to big businesses. They suggested that they should not interfere with the methods to achieve them, “those are left to companies” (2011:74). In this day and age, we are increasingly witnessing a growing consensus on principles and regulatory guidelines. The initial flurry of codes and guidelines seem to have settled around a few core standards, such as the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the UN Global Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals, the World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. This change toward sustainable and responsible business is a long-term process, but the momentum is important to reach the necessary tipping points in public opinion, policy response and business action. As a matter of fact, most of the largest corporations are continuously re-articulating their codes of conduct, certifiable standards, corporate programmes, industry initiatives, green politicians, triple-bottom-line reports and documentaries about sustainability (Brundtland 1987 ). Nevertheless, many of the global challenges are still present today — be they climate change, water depletion, biodiversity loss, bribery and corruption or income inequality, among others.

The term “sustainability” can mean different things to a variety of constituencies. While there may be no objection to the sentiments expressed by multiple stakeholders on the respective definitions for sustainable business, most of them are far from holistic. The sustainability systems may be too complex and varied, and their applications could be quite diverse. Some authors have attempted to relate sustainability with the corporations’ responsible behaviours: Interestingly, the corporate sustainability construct was also related to a nested system consisting of economic, societal, and ecological systems. These pillars are interconnected to each other where the economy is part of society, which is also a fundamental part of the larger ecological system. Corporate sustainability relies on six criteria: eco-efficiency, socio-efficiency, eco-effectiveness, socio-effectiveness, sufficiency and ecological equity (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002 ). These corporate sustainability imperatives can be structured into value systems that could result in a better financial performance (Salzmann et al. 2005 , Van Marrewijk 2003 ). A few researchers have developed (self)-assessment tools, that could be used to audit, analyse and interpret corporate sustainability (Van Marrewijk 2003 , Clarkson 1995 ). However, corporate sustainability may be contingent on different parameters (e.g. technology, regime and visibility) that could vary across industries, plants and countries (Salzmann et al. 2005 ). Corporate sustainability could reduce the downside operational risk as it comprises relevant measures that are intended to increase eco-efficiency, and health and safety performance among other issues (Porter and Kramer 2002 , Porter and Kramer 2011 , Camilleri 2014 ). This means that the economic value of sustainable business strategies could be materialised in the long-term (Weber 2008 , Guenster et al. 2011 ).

Notwithstanding, there are the long term effects of corporate sustainability on intangible assets (e.g. brand value, employee loyalty) could be difficult to quantify (Salzmann et al. 2005 , Dyllick and Hockerts 2002 ). Although some commentators have voiced their opposition to the normative calls in favour of the “sustainability rhetoric” (Salzmann et al. 2005 , Vogel 2007 ), it may appear that we are witnessing a relentless progression from active antagonism, through indifference, to a strong commitment to actively furthering sustainability values, not only within the organization, but across many industries and in our society as a whole. These recent developments imply that the organizations’ commitment to responsible behaviours may represent a transformation of the corporation into a truly sustainable business that is adding value to the business itself, whilst also adding value to society and the environment. Perhaps, there is scope for more collaboration between CSR and corporate sustainability fields. This synergy could help to increase the impact of social and environmental performance research within the field of strategic management. Ultimately, the corporate sustainability’s strategic goals are economic development, institutional effectiveness, stakeholder orientation and sustainable ecosystems (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002 , Shrivastava 1995 ).

Creating value for all: Seeking win-win outcomes with stakeholders

Firms create simultaneous, pluralistic definitions of value whilst targeting their stakeholders. In a similar vein, the resource based view (RBV) theory suggests that the resources of the firm affect its activities and growth, profits and the level of sustained competitive advantage (Barney, 1991 ). Significant areas of study which are synonymous with the corporate sustainability and responsibility approach include, ‘the Virtuous Circles’ (Pava and Krausz 1996 , Preston and O'bannon 1997 , Waddock and Graves 1997 ), ‘The Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks’ (Wheeler et al. 2005 , ‘The Triple Bottom Line Approach’ (Elkington 1998 ), ‘The Supply and Demand Theory of the Firm’ (McWilliams and Siegel 2001 ), ‘The Value Based Networks’ (Wheeler et al. 2003 ), ‘The Base of Pyramid Approaches’ (Anderson and Markides 2007 , Landrum 2007 ), ‘the Win-Win Perspective for CSR practices’ (Falck and Heblich 2007 ), ‘Creating Shared Value’ (Porter and Kramer 2011 , Union 2011 ), ‘Value in Business’ (Lindgreen et al. 2012 ), ‘The Stakeholder Approach to Maximizing Business and Social Value’ (Bhattacharya et al. 2012 ) and ‘Value Creation through Social Strategy’ (Husted et al. 2015 ), among others.

Very often, these value-based theories suggest that businesses should continuously monitor and evaluate their performance in terms of their economic results. It may appear that many of these propositions focus on identifying and expanding the connections between societal and economic progress. Whilst the traditional school of thought for CSR’s had primarily focused on responsibility, Porter and Kramer ( 2011 ) argued that their creating shared value (CSV) approach is inherently different than CSR. Yet, other academics did not view CSV as unrelated to strategic CSR practices (de los Reyes et al. 2016 , Beschorner 2014 ). Porter and Kramer ( 2011 ) contended that their proposed strategy has set out new business opportunities as it creates new markets, improves profitability and strengthens the corporations’ competitive positioning. The reason for this is that the businesses processes in the value chain operate in an environmental setting within their wider community context (Porter 2001 ). It may appear that Porter and Kramer ( 2011 ) had focused on the value chain activities that could bring opportunities for competitive advantage. The authors contended that there is shared value when the organizations’ social value propositions are integrated into their corporate strategies. Therefore, companies could benefit from insights, skills, and resources that cut across profit/non-profit and private/public boundaries. On the other hand, companies will be less successful if they attempt to tackle societal problems on their own.

Porter and Kramer ( 2011 ) maintained that companies could create shared value opportunities by reconceiving products and markets. Hence, new products and services that meet social needs or serve overlooked markets will require new value chain choices in areas such as production, marketing, and distribution. These revised configurations will create demand for equipment and technology that could save energy, conserve resources, and support employees. They argued that their shared value approach redefines productivity in the value chain by enabling local cluster development. They reiterated that their suggested avenues for creating shared value are mutually reinforcing as corporations, their marketplace stakeholders and the governments ought to work together to develop clusters that enable more local procurement and less dispersed supply chains. For example, Nestlé can be considered as a pioneer of the shared value initiative. The multinational organization has accessed new products, reconfigured and secured the value chain by tapping into new or better resources (through partners and cluster development) whilst improving their capabilities (in terms of skills, knowledge and productivity) of its suppliers. Nestlé sources its materials from thousands of farms in developing countries, where it provides training to farmers for sustainable production. This way, the company protects its procurement, raises its standards and maintains a high quality of the raw materials it uses. At the same time, these suppliers run profitable farms, as they offer their children a fairer future through better education. Moreover, both Nestlé and its suppliers are committed to protecting their natural environmental resources for their long-term sustainability. Nestlé’s business principles have incorporated ten United Nations Global Compact Principles on human rights, labour, the environment and corruption. The company maintains that it complies with international regulatory laws and acceptable codes of conduct, as it improves its company’s operations. Firms don’t just need to prepare financial reports. In a lot of countries, they’re legally required to report social and environmental information. And they have to build up accounting systems to do so (Rasche et al. 2013 ). Very often the companies’ responsible management may involve designing business processes and activities in a way that they meet certain social and environmental minimum standards.

Relevant academic literature is indicating that today’s businesses are strategically re-orienting themselves toward corporate sustainability and corporate responsibility whilst focusing on their stakeholders’ needs. Strand et al. ( 2015 ) suggested that CSV necessitates heightened forms of collaboration and stakeholder management as they remarked about the apparent links between creating shared value and stakeholder theory. Strand et al. ( 2015 ) posited that Porter and Kramer’s ( 2011 ) shared value proposition is a response to the competitive, conflict-based view of strategic management that Michael Porter himself helped to create (Strand 2014 ). However, some critics have argued that ‘shared value’ is based on a shallow conception of the corporation’s role in society (de los Reyes et al. 2016 , Crane et al. 2014 , Beschorner 2014 ) For instance, Crane et al. ( 2014 ) held that CSV looks naïve by ignoring the tensions that could exist between social and economic goals. They suggested that this proposition simplifies the role of corporations in society and ignores the challenges arising from business compliance. Their argument was that there are alternative ways to re-invent capitalism (Corazza et al. 2017 ). This strategic approach cannot cure all of society’s ills as not all businesses are good for society, nor would the pursuit of shared value eliminate all injustice (Porter & Kramer, 2014 ). Beschorner ( 2014 ) also noted that the creation of business value and social value may not always go hand in hand. He regarded Porter and Kramer’s ( 2011 ) shared value approach as a reformulation of a classical strategic stakeholder approach that tends to prioritise the relevance of stakeholders according to their influence on the business’ activities. Although shared value seems to address “win-win” business and society issues, it leaves managers ill-equipped to legitimately manage issues where they face the prospect of “win-lose” or “lose-win” social engagements (de los Reyes et al. 2016 ).

The way forward: -corporate sustainability and responsibility

In the past, CSR may have been more associated with corporate philanthropy, stewardship principles, contributions-in-kind toward social and environmental causes, environmental protection, employees’ engagement in community works, volunteerism and pro-bono service among other responsible initiatives. Very often, such altruistic CSR activities may have not resulted in financial performance to the business per se. On the contrary, certain discretionary expenses in corporate philanthropy could have usurped the businesses’ slack resources (including financial assets, labour and time) without adding much value (in terms of corporate reputation and goodwill) to the businesses. Nevertheless, this research reported that the contemporary discourses on corporate social responsibility are opening new opportunities for the businesses themselves. The academic discourse about CSR is moving away from ‘nice-to do’ to ‘doing-well-by-doing-good’ mantra. Evidently, the value-based approaches that were discussed in this paper could be considered as guiding principles that will lead tomorrow’s businesses to long term sustainability (in social and economic terms). Debatably, the profit motive (the business case or corporate sustainability concepts) could be linked with the corporate responsibility agenda. This way, the multinational corporations could be better prepared to address their societal and environmental deficits across the globe, whilst adding value to their business.

This review paper has built on the previous theoretical underpinnings of the corporate social responsibility agenda including Stakeholder Management, Corporate Citizenship and Creating Shared Value as it presents the latest Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility perspective. This value-based model reconciles strategic CSR and environmental management with a stakeholder approach to bring long term corporate sustainability, in terms of economic performance for the business, as well as corporate responsibility’s social outcomes. Recently, some international conferences including Humboldt University’s gatherings in 2014 and 2016 have also raised awareness on this proposition. The corporate sustainability and responsibility concept is linked to improvements to the companies’ internal processes including nvironmental management, human resource management, operations management and marketing (i.e. Corporate Sustainability). At the same time, it raises awareness on the businesses’ responsible behaviours (i.e. Corporate Responsibility) toward stakeholders including the government, suppliers, customers and the community, among others. The fundamental motivation behind this approach is the view that creating connections between stakeholders in the value chain will open-up unseen opportunities for the competitive advantage of responsible businesses, as illustrated in Table  2 .

Corporate sustainability and responsibility focuses on exploiting opportunities that reconcile differing stakeholder demands as many corporations out there are investing in corporate sustainability and responsible business practices (Lozano 2015 ). Their active engagement with multiple stakeholders (both internal and external stakeholders) will ultimately create synergistic value for all (Camilleri 2017 ).

Multinational organizations are under increased pressures from stakeholders (particularly customers and consumer associations) to revisit their numerous processes in their value chain activities. Each stage of the company’s production process, from the supply chain to the transformation of resources could add value to their businesses’ operational costs as they produce end-products. However, the businesses are always expected to be responsible in their internal processes toward their employees or toward their suppliers’ labour force. Therefore, this corporate sustainability and responsibility perspective demands that businesses create economic and societal value by re-aligning their corporate objectives with stakeholder management and environmental responsibility. In sum, corporate sustainability and responsibility may only happen when companies demonstrate their genuine willingness to add corporate responsible dimensions and stakeholder engagement to their value propositions. This occurs when businesses opt for responsible managerial practices that are integral to their overall corporate strategy. These strategic behaviours create opportunities for them to improve the well-being of stakeholders as they reduce negative externalities on the environment. The negative externalities can be eliminated by developing integrated approaches that are driven by ethical and sustainability principles. Very often, multinational businesses are in a position to mitigate risk and to avoid inconveniences to third parties. For instance, major accidents including BP’s Deep Horizon oil spill in 2010, or the collapse of Primark’s Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, back in 2013, could have been prevented if the big businesses were responsible beforehand.

In conclusion, the corporate sustainability and responsibility construct is about embedding sustainability and responsibility by seeking out and connecting with the stakeholders’ varied interests. As firms reap profits and grow, there is a possibility that they generate virtuous circles of positive multiplier effects (Camilleri 2017 ). Therefore, corporate sustainability and responsibility can be considered as strategic in its intents and purposes. Indeed, the businesses are capable of being socially and environmentally responsible ‘citizens’ as they are doing well, economically. This theoretical paper has contributed to academic knowledge as it explained the foundations for corporate sustainability and responsibility. Although this concept is still evolving, the debate among academic commentators is slowly but surely raising awareness on responsible managerial practices and on the skills and competences that are needed to deliver strategic results that create value for businesses, society and the environment.

Limitations and future research avenues

No research is without limitations. This conceptual paper could not have featured all of the contributions that are related to CSR’s value driven notions. However, the scope of this paper has been reached. The corporate sustainability and responsibility proposition could appeal to business practitioners themselves, as sustainable and responsible behaviours may bring significant improvements to their firms’ bottom lines. Of course, there are diverse contexts across different industry sectors (and jurisdictions) that will surely influence the successful implementation of corporate sustainability and responsibility practices and their reporting mechanisms. Notwithstanding, it may prove difficult to quantify the tangible and intangible benefits of corporate sustainability and responsibility. Future theoretical and empirical research may address these challenging issues, in further detail. Indeed, there is also potential for more conceptual development in this promising area of strategic management.

Anderson J, Markides C (2007) Strategic innovation at the base of the pyramid. MIT Sloan Manag Rev 49(1):83–88

Google Scholar  

Bansal P, Jiang GF, Jung JC (2015) Managing responsibly in tough economic times: strategic and tactical CSR during the 2008–2009 global recession. Long Range Plan 48(2):69–79

Article   Google Scholar  

Barney J (1991) Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of management 17(1):99–120.

Baron DP (2001) Private politics, corporate social responsibility, and integrated strategy. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 10(1):7–45

Benn S, Dunphy D, Griffiths A (2014) Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge, Oxford, UK

Berman SL, Wicks AC, Kotha S, Jones TM (1999) Does stakeholder orientation matter? The relationship between stakeholder management models and firm financial performance. Acad Manag J 42(5):488–506

Beschorner T (2014) Creating shared value: the one-trick pony approach. Business Ethics Journal Review 1(17):106–112

Bhattacharya CB, Korschun D, Sen S (2009) Strengthening stakeholder–company relationships through mutually beneficial corporate social responsibility initiatives. J Bus Ethics 85(2):257–272

Bhattacharya CB, Sen S, Korschun D (2012) The stakeholder route to maximizing business and social value. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

Brundtland GH (1987) Our common future: report of the 1987 world commission on environment and development. United Nations, Oslo

Burke L, Logsdon JM (1996) How corporate social responsibility pays off. Long Range Plan 29(4):495–502

Camilleri MA (2014) Advancing the sustainable tourism agenda through strategic CSR perspectives. Tourism Planning & Development 11(1):42–56

Camilleri MA (2015) Valuing stakeholder engagement and sustainability reporting. Corp Reput Rev 18(3):210–222

Camilleri MA (2017) Corporate sustainability, social responsibility and environmental management: an introduction to theory and practice with case studies. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany

Book   Google Scholar  

Carroll AB (1979) A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate performance. Acad Manag Rev 4(4):497–505

Carroll AB (1991) The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business horizons 34(4):39–48

Carroll AB (1998) The four faces of corporate citizenship. Bus Soc Rev 100(1):1–7

Carroll AB, Buchholtz, AK (2014). Business and society: ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Nelson Education

Carroll AB, Shabana KM (2010) The business case for corporate social responsibility: a review of concepts, research and practice. Int J Manag Rev 12(1):85–105

Clarkson ME (1995) A stakeholder framework for analyzing and evaluating corporate social performance. Acad Manag Rev 20(1):92–117

Corazza L, Scagnelli SD, Mio C (2017) Simulacra and sustainability disclosure: analysis of the interpretative models of creating shared value. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. In press.

Crane A, Palazzo G, Spence LJ, Matten D (2014) Contesting the value of “creating shared value”. Calif Manag Rev 56(2):130–153

Davis K (1960) Can business afford to ignore social responsibilities? Calif Manag Rev 2(3):70–76

De Bakker FG, Groenewegen P, Den Hond F (2005) A bibliometric analysis of 30 years of research and theory on corporate social responsibility and corporate social performance. Business & Society 44(3):283–317

de los Reyes G, Scholz M, Smith NC (2016) Beyond the ‘win-win’: creating shared value requires ethical frameworks. California Management Review, Forthcoming. Forthcoming, INSEAD Working Paper No. 2016/67/ATL/Social Innovation Centre. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2848192

Desai MA, Dharmapala D (2009) Corporate tax avoidance and firm value. Rev Econ Stat 91(3):537–546

Donaldson T, Preston LE (1995) The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of management Review 20(1):65–91.

Drucker PF (1984) Converting social problems into business opportunities: the new meaning of corporate social responsibility. Calif Manag Rev 26(2):53–63

Dyllick T, Hockerts K (2002) Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Bus Strateg Environ 11(2):130–141

Eisenhardt KM (1989) Agency theory: an assessment and review. Acad Manag Rev 14(1):57–74

Elkington J (1998) Partnerships from cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21stcentury business. Environ Qual Manag 8(1):37–51

Elkington J (2012) Sustainability should not be consigned to history by Shared Value https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainability-with-john-elkington/shared-value-johnelkington-sustainability

European Union (2011) A renewed EU strategy 2011–14 for corporate social responsibility. European Commission, Brussels, Belgium http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0681:FIN:en:PDF

European Union (2016) Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the EU. European Commission Publications, Brussels, Belgium http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=331

Falck O, Heblich S (2007) Corporate social responsibility: doing well by doing good. Business Horizons 50(3):247–254

Fombrun CJ (2005) A world of reputation research, analysis and thinking—building corporate reputation through CSR initiatives: evolving standards. Corp Reput Rev 8(1):7–12

Fombrun CJ, Gardberg NA, Barnett ML (2000) Opportunity platforms and safety nets: corporate citizenship and reputational risk. Bus Soc Rev 105(1):85–106

Freeman RE (1984) Stakeholder management: framework and philosophy. Pitman, Mansfield, MA. USA

Freeman RE, Harrison JS, Wicks AC, Parmar BL, De Colle S (2010) Stakeholder theory: the state of the art. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.

Friedman M (1970) The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine 13:32–33

Godfrey PC (2005) The relationship between corporate philanthropy and shareholder wealth: a risk management perspective. Acad Manag Rev 30(4):777–798

Godfrey PC, Merrill CB, Hansen JM (2009) The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: an empirical test of the risk management hypothesis. Strateg Manag J 30(4):425–445

Griffin JJ, Mahon JF (1997) The corporate social performance and corporate financial performance debate twenty-five years of incomparable research. Business & Society 36(1):5–31

Guenster N, Bauer R, Derwall J, Koedijk K (2011) The economic value of corporate ecoefficiency. European Financial Management 17(4):679–704

Gupta S, Sharma N (2009) CSR-A business opportunity. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations:396–401

Harrison JS, Wicks AC (2013) Stakeholder theory, value, and firm performance. Bus Ethics Q 23(1):97–124

Hemingway CA, Maclagan PW (2004) Managers' personal values as drivers of corporate social responsibility. J Bus Ethics 50(1):33–44

Henisz WJ, Dorobantu S, Nartey LJ (2014) Spinning gold: the financial returns to stakeholder engagement. Strateg Manag J 35(12):1727–1748

Hillman AJ, Keim GD (2001) Shareholder value, stakeholder management, and social issues: what's the bottom line?. Strategic management journal 125–39.

Hull CE, Rothenberg S (2008) Firm performance: the interactions of corporate social performance with innovation and industry differentiation. Strateg Manag J 29(7):781–789

Husted BW, Allen DB (2009) Strategic corporate social responsibility and value creation. Manag Int Rev 49(6):781–799

Husted BW, Allen DB, Kock N (2015) Value creation through social strategy. Business & Society 54(2):147–186

Jamali D (2007) The case for strategic corporate social responsibility in developing countries. Bus Soc Rev 112(1):1–27

Johnson RA, Greening DW (1999) The effects of corporate governance and institutional ownership types on corporate social performance. Acad Manag J 42(5):564–576

Jones DA, Willness CR, Madey S (2014) Why are job seekers attracted by corporate social performance? Experimental and field tests of three signal-based mechanisms. Acad Manag J 57(2):383–404

Kotler P, Lee N (2008) Corporate social responsibility: doing the most good for your company and your cause. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA

Landrum NE (2007) Advancing the “base of the pyramid” debate. Strategic Management Review 1(1):1–12

Lantos GP (2001) The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility. J Consum Mark 18(7):595–632

Lantos GP (2002) The ethicality of altruistic corporate social responsibility. J Consum Mark 19(3):205–232

Levitt T (1958) The dangers of social-responsibility. Harv Bus Rev 36(5):41–50

Lindgreen A, Hingley MK, Grant DB, Morgan RE (2012) Value in business and industrial marketing: past, present, and future. Ind Mark Manag 41(1):207–214

Lozano R (2015) A holistic perspective on corporate sustainability drivers. Corp Soc Responsib Environ Manag 22(1):32–44

Maignan I, Ferrell OC, Hult GTM (1999) Corporate citizenship: cultural antecedents and business benefits. J Acad Mark Sci 27(4):455–469

Margolis JD, Walsh JP (2001) People and profits?: the search for a link between a company's social and financial performance. Psychology Press, New York, NY, USA

Marques-Mendes A, Santos MJ (2016) Strategic CSR: an integrative model for analysis. Social Responsibility Journal 12(2):363–81.

Matten D, Crane A (2005) Corporate citizenship: toward an extended theoretical conceptualization. Acad Manag Rev 30(1):166–179

McWilliams A, Siegel D (2001) Corporate social responsibility: a theory of the firm perspective. Acad Manag Rev 26(1):117–127

McWilliams A, Siegel DS, Wright PM (2006) Corporate social responsibility: strategic implications. J Manag Stud 43(1):1–18

Montiel I (2008) Corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability separate pasts, common futures. Organization & Environment 21(3):245–269

Morsing M, Schultz M (2006) Corporate social responsibility communication: stakeholder information, response and involvement strategies. Business Ethics: A European Review 15(4):323–338

Murillo D, Lozano JM (2006) SMEs and CSR: an approach to CSR in their own words. J Bus Ethics 67(3):227–240

O’Riordan L, Fairbrass J (2014) Managing CSR stakeholder engagement: a new conceptual framework. J Bus Ethics 125(1):121–145

Olsen TD (2017) Political stakeholder theory: the state, legitimacy, and the ethics of microfinance in emerging economies. Bus Ethics Q 27(1)

Orlitzky M, Schmidt FL, Rynes SL (2003) Corporate social and financial performance: a meta-analysis. Organ Stud 24(3):403–441

Orlitzky M, Siegel DS, Waldman DA (2011) Strategic corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Business & society 50(1):6–27

Pava ML, Krausz J (1996) The association between corporate social-responsibility and financial performance: the paradox of social cost. J Bus Ethics 15(3):321–357

Porter ME (2001) The value chain and competitive advantage. Understanding business, Processes, pp 50–66

Porter ME, Kramer MR (2002) The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy. Harv Bus Rev 80(12):56–68

Porter ME, Kramer MR (2006, Dec 2006) The link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility. Harv Bus Rev:78–92

Porter ME, Kramer MR (2011) Creating shared value. Harv Bus Rev 89(1/2):62–77

Porter ME, Kramer MR (2014) A response to Crane, A., Palazzo, G., Spence, L.J. and Matten, D http://www.dirkmatten.com/Papers/C/Crane%20et%20al%202014%20in%20CMR.pdf

Porter ME, Kramer M (2014) A response to Andrew Crane et al’.s article by Crane, A., Palazzo, G., Spence, L.J. & Matten, D. Contesting the value of “creating shared value" p. 20. http://www.dirkmatten.com/Papers/C/Crane%20et%20al%202014%20in%20CMR.pdf . Accessed 14 Sept 2017.

Preston LE, O'bannon DP (1997) The corporate social-financial performance relationship. Business and society 36(4):419–429

Rasche A, De Bakker FG, Moon J (2013) Complete and partial organizing for corporate social responsibility. J Bus Ethics 115(4):651–663

Salzmann O, Ionescu-Somers A, Steger U (2005) The business case for corporate sustainability:: literature review and research options. Eur Manag J 23(1): 27–36

Sen S, Bhattacharya CB, Korschun D (2006) The role of corporate social responsibility in strengthening multiple stakeholder relationships: a field experiment. J Acad Mark Sci 34(2):158–166

Shrivastava P (1995) The role of corporations in achieving ecological sustainability. Acad Manag Rev 20(4):936–960

Singh J, Del Bosque IR (2008) Understanding corporate social responsibility and product perceptions in consumer markets: a cross-cultural evaluation. J Bus Ethics 80(3):597–611

Steger U, Ionescu-Somers A, Salzmann O (2007) The economic foundations of corporate sustainability. Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society 7(2):162–77.

Strand R (2014) Scandinavia can be an inspiration for creating shared value. Financial Times Business Education Soapbox. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/84bbd770-b34d-11e3-b09d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2zw0bVEbR

Strand R, Freeman RE, Hockerts K (2015) Corporate social responsibility and sustainability in Scandinavia: an overview. J Bus Ethics 127(1):1–15

Trejo SJ (1997) Why do Mexican Americans earn low wages? J Polit Econ 105(6):1235–1268

Turban DB, Greening DW (1997) Corporate social performance and organizational attractiveness to prospective employees. Acad Manag J 40(3):658–672

Van Marrewijk M (2003) Concepts and definitions of CSR and corporate sustainability: between agency and communion. J Bus Ethics 44(2):95–105

Van Marrewijk M, Werre M (2003) Multiple levels of corporate sustainability. J Bus Ethics 44(2):107–119

Verbeke A, Tung V (2013) The future of stakeholder management theory: a temporal perspective. J Bus Ethics 112(3):529–543

Visser W (2011) The age of responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the new DNA of business. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, west Sussex, U.K.

Vogel DJ (2005) Is there a market for virtue? The business case for corporate social responsibility. Calif Manag Rev 47(4):19–45

Vogel DJ (2007) The market for virtue: the potential and limits of corporate social responsibility. Brookings Institution Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA

Waddock SA, Graves SB (1997) The corporate social performance-financial performance link. Strateg Manag J 18(4):303–319

Walton CC (1967) Corporate social responsibilities. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, California, USA

Wang H, Choi J (2013) A new look at the corporate social–financial performance relationship the moderating roles of temporal and interdomain consistency in corporate social performance. J Manag 39(2):416–441

Weber M (2008) The business case for corporate social responsibility: a company-level measurement approach for CSR. Eur Manag J 26(4):247–261

Wheeler D, Colbert B, Freeman RE (2003) Focusing on value: reconciling corporate social responsibility, sustainability and a stakeholder approach in a network world. J Gen Manag 28(3):1–28

Wheeler D, McKague K, Thomson J, Davies R, Medalye J, Prada M (2005) Creating sustainable local enterprise networks. MIT Sloan Manag Rev 47(1):33–40

Yasser QR, Al Mamun A, Ahmed I (2017) Corporate social responsibility and gender diversity: insights from Asia Pacific. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. In press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Mark Anthony Camilleri

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Anthony Camilleri .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares that he has no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Camilleri, M.A. Corporate sustainability and responsibility: creating value for business, society and the environment. AJSSR 2 , 59–74 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41180-017-0016-5

Download citation

Received : 03 March 2017

Accepted : 13 September 2017

Published : 22 September 2017

Issue Date : September 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41180-017-0016-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Corporate sustainability and responsibility
  • Creating shared value

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Measuring corporate social responsibility: an evaluation of a new sustainable development goals index for Fortune 500 companies

International Journal of Organizational Analysis

ISSN : 1934-8835

Article publication date: 18 May 2022

Issue publication date: 19 December 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore, develop, and evaluate a new sustainable development goals (SDG) index that quantifies corporate social responsibility (CSR). By providing a granular perspective with clear justification for methods, this index is more applicable to academic research in comparison with the CSR indices published by private companies.

Design/methodology/approach

Focusing on the Fortune 500 companies in 2017, this study uses data from Bloomberg, ASSET4, and the Carbon Disclosure Project. A z -score was calculated for each variable, which was then aggregated according to the SDG indicator list to calculate each SDG score. Various robust analyses were conducted.

The SDG index shows that companies tend to score worse on environment-related goals compared with social goals. Furthermore, for each SDG, there are differences across industrial sectors, a finding that is enabled by the more granular approach of this index. Additionally, the leaders and laggards are identified for each of the SDGs.

Originality/value

This study identifies the methodological weaknesses of the existing CSR indices and introduces and evaluates an alternative index based on the SDGs. This alterative index provides methodological clarity and granularity of data, which were lacking in previously established indices.

  • Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
  • Sustainable development goals (SDGs)
  • Environmental
  • And governance (ESG)

Lee, D. and Hess, D.J. (2022), "Measuring corporate social responsibility: an evaluation of a new sustainable development goals index for Fortune 500 companies", International Journal of Organizational Analysis , Vol. 30 No. 7, pp. 137-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-12-2021-3082

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Dasom Lee and David J. Hess.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence maybe seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Corporations often operate in an under-regulated economic environment, yet their practices have deep impacts on our daily lives, from environmental to social sustainability. Both private companies and academic researchers have attempted to quantify corporate social responsibility (CSR) by assigning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores to companies ( Pérez and Del Bosque, 2013 ; Singh and Mittal, 2019 ). ESG scores can be described as a CSR performance measure of a company’s contributions to society, sustainability, policy priorities, and other socially and politically significant values or goals. These scores are of particular interest to the financial industry because they can indicate or even predict corporate performance ( Alawamleh and Giacaman, 2020 ; Yadav and Mankavil Kovil Veettil, 2021 ). Consequently, there has been a sharp increase in the demand for reliable and valid ESG scores. However, because the existing ESG measures are often proprietary, not well defined and subject to change, they do not provide the methodological clarity and theoretical justification that are required for scholarly analysis.

This study explores and develops an alternative approach to existing ESG scores based on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN), which introduced the goals in 2015 as a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This study contributes to the literature by providing a new CSR index that uses the SDGs as the foundation of its measurement and that distinguishes performance across individual companies and industrial sectors. This approach allows for a more granular understanding of CSR, which will provide new opportunities for research and will also help to identify targeted improvement for government and private actors.

2. Literature review

2.1 the shortcomings of existing measures of corporate social responsibility.

Bloomberg ESG (Bloomberg), Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) and Thomson Reuters ASSET4 (ASSET4) are among the leading private companies that have been collecting ESG data. These companies compile data on various metrics related to ESG and provide raw data as well as the calculated final score. However, despite the importance of these metrics and indices, there is a significant lack of methodological clarity, which can cause problems with scholarly research. Table 1 describes the existing indices, their methods of calculation, their strengths and methodological limitations.

The existing indices were mostly developed by private companies for investment risk assessment, and although they have an important role in the evaluation of CSR performance, they lack theoretical rigour and methodological clarity. Several scholars ( Gjølberg, 2009 ; Pérez and Del Bosque, 2013 ) have attempted to build their own indices, but it is a time-consuming process. Consequently, indices developed by private researchers tend to be limiting in terms of scope and capacity.

A need for CSR indices to be grounded in theoretical justification and to provide methodological clarity has been voiced in the literature. Several studies argued that the limited scope and theories involved in CSR indices have led to its shortcomings. Schneider and Meins (2012) argued that the indices ignore economic sustainability and fail to distinguish between governance and CSR transparency and performance. Similarly, Seele and Chesney (2017) claimed that financial toxicity is a dimension that is not discussed in the existing indices at all.

2.2 Triple bottom line and the sustainable development goals

The triple bottom line (TBL), also known as the three pillars theory or 3Ps, is a theory that discusses the three most important fundamental ideas of CSR. It states that companies, in performing CSR, should address three main issues, which are profit, people, and planet ( Svensson et al. , 2018 ). Here, the profit refers to the economic well-being of the companies that adhere to the interests of its shareholders, and the people refer to the social responsibility, which is expressed through advocating justice, equity, accessibility, and security. Furthermore, the planet refers to the environmental responsibility that companies should acknowledge and address ( Ferro et al. , 2019 ; Sala, 2020 ; Westerman et al. , 2020 ).

The TBL approach is particularly important for understanding CSR because it provides holistic objectives that include social, economic, and environmental elements ( Shayan et al. , 2022 ). It accounts for the economic development and growth that many companies strive for, yet also addresses sustainability challenges that many companies are required to attend to. Using TBL as its main theoretical framework, this paper builds a new CSR index that engages in the most important societal and environmental challenges faced by corporations, which are identified by the UN SDGs.

In selecting the variables for the index, we explore whether the SDGs can be used as the theoretical foundation to measure CSR. The SDGs comprise 17 goals and are intended to serve as “a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all” ( United Nations, 2021 ). In enacting these goals, the UN suggests that private companies are important actors in the implementation of the SDGs. The relationship between the SDGs and corporate performance has already been a topic of social scientific study ( Hu et al. , 2016 ; Martinuzzi et al. , 2017 ; Stafford-Smith et al. , 2017 ; Macellari et al. , 2018 ). However, the SDGs have not yet been used to retheorize indices that measure CSR performance.

The goals address issues of poverty, water sanitation, employment, gender, climate change, and other widely discussed political issues (United Nations 2016). They can be used by local authorities, government agencies, and civil society organizations, and among high, medium, and low-income countries. The SDGs can also guide corporate behaviour, and the relationship between the SDGs and CSR has already been a topic in many studies ( Martinuzzi et al. , 2017 ; Macellari et al. , 2018 ; Bag and Pretorius, 2020 ; Lathabhavan, 2021 ). Furthermore, Van Zanten and Van Tulder stated that the SDGs provide the foundational platform and “central and lasting framework” for companies to target global sustainability goals ( van Zanten and van Tulder, 2018 , p. 227).

2.3 An alternative index based on the sustainable development goals

To address the limitations of the existing indices, this study constructs a new SDG index, which differs from the previous studies in two ways. First, this study adopts the perspective that the variables used in constructing the index should not be randomly chosen. The most critical weakness of the existing indices is not the quality of the collected raw data but how the data are grouped and analysed. To address this problem, this study uses the raw data published by these companies but groups the variables using the SDGs, which provide a more robust theoretical justification for the construction of a CSR index and for its constituent elements. Because the SDGs relate to widespread international values that have been articulated through a UN process, they provide a solid foundation for understanding CSR. Second, this new index differs from the existing indices because it provides granular data on CSR performance based on solid methodological justifications (i.e. the SDGs). Because existing indices categorize CSR disclosure or performance scores into larger groups, such as ESG, they do not allow for any variation within each group. However, the SDG index provides scores for each SDG, which allows more exact and specific research questions for future research.

Following from this line of thought, this paper’s research questions are twofold. First, we ask, “how can the SDGs be used to quantify and measure CSR?” Second, we ask, “how does this new measurement contribute to our understanding of CSR?” These research questions focus on the methodological contributions of this paper and the potential application of the SDG index to the existing literature.

3. Data and methods

3.1 data sources.

This study focuses on the 2017 Fortune 500 companies. Data for 2017 were available at the time of data collection, and the 2018 data were not complete. Among highly developed or wealthy countries, the USA has the largest economy and ecological footprint at 8.1 gha ( Global Footprint Network, 2019 ). As a country that is leading in both the size of the economy and ecological footprint, it is important to focus on some of the biggest corporations in that country. This study uses the 500 largest US companies, of which 32 companies were removed because they did not publish any ESG data. The reasons for not publishing data include being a privately held company and bankruptcy after 2017. After these exclusions, the final sample size of this data set was 468, with the unit of analysis being corporations.

There were three main sources of data: Bloomberg ESG, ASSET4, and the CDP. These are three of the four main data sets published by public corporations. MSCI data, another major data set on CSR, could not be added due to accessibility. The only limitation that the lack of MSCI data poses is that the index does not account for the intensity of the controversies that are published by MSCI. Instead, the study uses the count of the controversies from ASSET4. The intensity of controversies was not added to the index because there is a lack of reliable data that address the intensity due to its subjective nature.

3.2 Construction of the sustainable development goal scores

In this study, the term “variable” refers to a measure of a component of SDGs, such as total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, worker and wage controversies, or biodiversity policies. Variables were matched to SDGs based on the SDG indicators published by the United Nations (2016) . After a complete list of variables was constructed, the variables with no variation or observation were deleted. From the data, a total of 105 variables that were relevant to the SDGs was identified. Of these 105 variables, 18 variables with more than 350 missing observations were also removed. After these removals, a total of 87 variables were left, and they were used to calculate the SDG scores. The correlation between a measure that included these high missing variables and a measure that did not include these high missing variables was high at 0.99 ( p < 0.01). The mapping of the variables into each SDGs is explained in Appendix .

Variables that can be attributed to more than one goal were included in the measure for all relevant SDGs. Therefore, some variables were weighed more heavily. However, even when a measure was constructed with equal weights for all variables (only adding variables once throughout the analysis), the correlation with the weighted index was 0.99 ( p < 0.01), which indicates that weighing them makes little difference to the overall scores.

The SDGs report published by the UN provides 230 indicators for their 17 goals ( United Nations, 2016 ). It was not possible to address all 230 indicators for corporations because the SDGs were originally developed for governments and international organizations. For example, goals such as “1.5.1 Number of deaths, missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 people” is more relevant for governments than corporations. Likewise, Goal 10, which states, “Reduce equality within and among countries”, was excluded from the analysis because it applies more to governments and international organizations than to corporations.

Some variables appeared in two data sets (Bloomberg and ASSET4). These variables were total energy use, total waste, total recycled waste and hazardous waste. For these four variables, the two data sets were merged using the average between the two observations. Observations were similar enough that merging did not yield any significant difference.

Once relevant variables for each SDG were identified and grouped to each SDG, a z -score was calculated across each variable. Using a standardized measure such as the z -score was necessary because the units of measurement were different across all variables. Variables that would have negative environmental and social impact were reverse coded so that the highest number would lead to the lowest z -scores. The z -scores were then averaged to calculate a score for each SDG. For example, for Goal 2 (hunger), four variables were used: biodiversity controversies, product access low price, product quality controversies and biodiversity policies. Each of the four variables had a z -score for each company. The z -scores were averaged for each company to create one z -score distribution for each goal (e.g. Goal 2 or hunger). The same calculation was done for all goals (except Goal 10). In calculating the SDG score using the variables, all variables were weighed the same within a goal. However, the number of variables per SDG is different. Goal 2 (hunger) only includes four variables, but Goal 12 (sustainable consumption) has 19 variables. Therefore, although biodiversity policy is a variable that happens to be included in both SDGs, it weighs significantly more in Goal 2 (hunger) than in Goal 12 (sustainable consumption) because of the differences in the number of variables included in each SDG. Once scores for all SDGs were obtained for each company, they were averaged to have a z -score that would represent the overall SDG performance score for each company. In calculating the aggregate SDG score, all SDGs were weighed the same.

Initially, factor analysis was considered for the construction of the index. However, because SDGs tend to embody more than one social and environmental issue instead of focusing on a single latent variable, the model fits were poor. Therefore, using the z -scores was considered to be the most appropriate method.

3.3 Missing data and robustness checks

Missing metrics mean the company is not publishing data because either it has a poor performance on the metric or because it does not wish to be transparent. Because missing data have behavioural implications, they are considered as missing not at random rather than missing completely at random or missing at random.

Many previous studies in the past have accounted for transparency as a part of CSR ( Graafland and Eijffinger, 2004 ; Guenther et al. , 2006 ; Kim and Lee, 2018 ). Following from this logic, the assumption is that less transparent companies tend to perform worse in CSR than transparent companies. For example, Nazari et al. (2017) found that clearly written reports and disclosure led to better CSR performance, and the reverse was the case for vague and unclear written CSR reports. Consequently, companies with missing data were penalized and given the lowest z -score within the same variable. For example, Berkshire Hathaway did not publish data on total GHG emissions. Therefore, for this variable, the company were given the lowest z -score of the variable (−7.27).

Because this method assigns missing data the lowest value for a variable, missing data may affect the overall SDG z -score for a company. Most studies in CSR tend to use the listwise deletion method, which deletes observations that carry any missing data ( Giannarakis, 2014 ; Friede et al. , 2015 ; Sethi et al. , 2017 ). However, for the construction of this index, listwise deletion was not a feasible method because this study uses 87 variables from three different data sets. All companies had at least one missing observation, and the mean number of missing observations per company was 17.2. Therefore, the most appropriate way to deal with missing data was to assign the lowest score for a variable to companies that did not provide data.

In addition to the two alternative indices that we have created as robustness checks for decisions regarding weighting and high missing variables, we have created a third alternative index to check whether controlling for the sector was important. This step was taken to measure whether controlling for sector was yielding a significantly different result compared to not controlling for the sector. In this alternative index, a z -score was obtained within the sector to which a company was assigned. For missing data, the company was given the lowest z -score within the sector to which the company belongs. For example, because Berkshire Hathaway did not publish GHG emissions data, it was given the lowest z -score of the variable within the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector (i.e. −3.84, which was the lowest z -score for total GHG emission for the FIRE sector). An indication of the soundness of this analytic strategy for missing data is that the correlation between the SDG index and this alternative index was high (r = 0.94, p < 0.01).

3.4 Analysis

To quantitatively describe the SDG scores, this paper uses analysis of variance (ANOVA) and graphical exploratory data analysis. Because of the originality of the data, graphics are used as tools to better visualize and understand SDG scores. This study identifies the leaders and laggards of each SDG, and it uses total assets as the anchoring variable. Corporate size can substantially change the available resources for CSR, which can be reflected in CSR performance scores ( Riantani and Nurzamzam, 2015 ). Therefore, in identifying leaders and laggards, total assets must be taken into account. We log the total assets data to account for the wide distribution and the large standard deviation values of the variable. Total assets data are collected from Bloomberg.

3.5 Limitations

Although the use of SDGs as the theoretical rationale for measuring CSR performance is an improvement on existing measures, we do not claim that it is the only approach possible to measure CSR. Even for approaches that build on our strategy of measuring CSR based on SDGs, there are multiple decision points that could be explored in future versions of a similar index. For example, as more information becomes available, it may be possible to change the configuration of variables for each SDG and to complete missing data. Additional data from MSCI could also improve the measure, such as by providing a measure of intensity could be compared with our count measure. It would also be possible to experiment with other weighting decisions than the one adopted here. Although we recognize the limitations and opportunities for future research, we also note that this study created several alternative indices as robustness checks, and they had a high correlation with the index adopted here.

4.1 Evaluation of the sustainable development goal index

Table 2 shows the average SDG scores by goals. Overall, environmental goals have a lower score than social goals, with many environmental goals having a z -score below −1. The best performing sector on all SDGs is materials, whereas the worst performing sector of total SDG scores is communications. Table 3 shows the average SDG scores by sector in z -scores. Here, materials sector is the highest-scoring sector and communication is the lowest scoring sector. Table 4 shows the ANOVA analysis of SDG scores by sector. Except for Goal 5 (gender), Goal 7 (energy) and Goal 16 (justice), all other goals are dissimilar across sectors. In other words, companies in different sectors tend to behave differently regarding most SDGs, and granular SDG data are valuable for future research.

Figure 1 identifies the leaders and laggards of total SDG scores. As discussed above, the logged values of total assets are included as the variable that allows comparable analysis between corporations because it accounts for each company’s available resources for CSR. The companies that are placed in the top left would be considered as leaders because even though their total assets are relatively small, their SDG score is high. The companies placed at the bottom right would be considered laggards because of their high total assets and low SDG scores. Figure 1 shows that Johnson & Johnson is the main leader for total SDG score, whereas Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae can be considered laggards. Citigroup and Bank of America have higher SDG scores compared to other companies, but their total assets are also considerably higher, which implies that they have more resources to be environmentally and socially sustainable.

4.2 Identifying environmental and social leaders and laggards

The strength of the SDG index lies with its granularity. The SDG index developed provides scores for each SDG, which can be used to identify the leaders and laggards for each goal. This analytical development is theoretically important because it allows more specific targeting of industries, sectors, and corporations on very specific issues.

Figure 2 shows the relationship for environment-related SDGs and total assets, and it identifies the leaders and laggards. Only Goals 6 (water), 7 (energy), 9 (infrastructure and innovation), 12 (sustainable consumption), and 13 (climate) are shown here because the other environmental SDGs do not have clear leaders or laggards. There are two notable leaders: Arconic and Gap for Goal 6. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are the laggards in all noted environmental SDGs.

With respect to social SDGs, Figure 3 identifies the leaders and laggards for the SDGs that strive for social sustainability, such as justice and equality. Again, only the SDGs that have clear leaders and laggards are included. For Goal 1 (poverty), there are several leaders, including Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Microsoft, and Eli Lily. Similar companies along with Lockheed also lead Goal 17 (partnership). Goal 8 (sustainable development) also have some notable leaders, such as General Motors, Exxon Mobil, and AT&T. Estee Lauder is the clear leader for Goal 5 (gender). For three of the goals, Goal 1 (poverty), Goal 5 (gender), and Goal 8 (sustainable development), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to be laggards as their total assets are high, but their SDG scores are low in comparison. Furthermore, for Goals 1 (poverty) and 5 (gender), Berkshire Hathaway is also considered a laggard.

5. Discussion

This study finds that sectors tend to perform differently based on the SDGs and that there are different leaders and laggards for each SDG. The importance of environmental and social SDGs, which also is shown in association with total assets, shows the relevance of the TBL in understanding CSR. The findings indicate that to understand CSR, a granular understanding of social and environmental SDGs is essential because companies and sectors tend to have different priorities and values regarding CSR. In other words, their CSR performance cannot be fully understood by using larger CSR groups such as ESG. In this sense, the SDGs provide a theoretical foundation for measuring CSR for scholarly research because it provides 17 different goals with hundreds of indicators. Furthermore, understanding CSR as a granular but harmonious concept that encompasses environmental, social and economic is important as indicated by TBL and the findings ( Shayan et al. , 2022 ).

Prior to conducting the analysis, the expectation was that there would be a greater number of laggards. However, the number of laggards was generally limited to two companies for each SDG. One explanation of the fewer number of laggards is that the method for handling missing data leads to the clumping together of laggards. Another explanation is that companies try to compensate for their bad behaviour by doing better on similar variables that are also included in the measure for the same SDG. For example, many energy companies score badly on their GHG emissions because they emit significantly more than other sectors or because they refuse to disclose their data. However, in compensation, energy companies have tended to sign UN Global Compact signatories, have climate-change policies, and score relatively well in emission reductions. Therefore, firms that score particularly low for one variable can do well overall for an SDG because it comprises multiple variables.

6. Conclusion

Despite numerous efforts to make corporations more responsible for their environmental and social impact, there is still room for further improvement for corporations. In contrast with existing indices, this study develops a new approach to measuring CSR that is based on the UN SDGs. By having a measure of CSR that can be broken down into multiple metrics based on the SDGs, it becomes possible to investigate in a more granular way the differences of SDG adoption across companies and sectors. Doing so can enable companies, advocacy organizations or governments to identify areas of poor performance at both a sector level and a firm level. It can also help to identify companies that have developed leading practices and assess the possibility of motivating the diffusion of those practices across companies and industries.

The approach to measuring ESG also has implications for future research. An important topic for future research is the question of why some corporations perform better for some SDGs but do not stand out as leaders in others. One hypothesis is that some SDGs have a lower impact on profitability or that they have delayed effects of expenditures. Another hypothesis is that different aspects of corporate governance may predict performance on the different SDGs and overall performance. For example, with CSR broken down into the different SDGs and with its quantitative threshold, it would be possible to test if the gender composition of the board can make a significant difference in CSR performance on Goal 5 (gender). Furthermore, future studies may use more recent and longitudinal data that would provide a more holistic and complementary perspective towards CSR.

In summary, this study indicates that there are some leaders in the business communities that should be praised for their actions. Attention could be given to what motivates or causes their high performance and how their practices can be encouraged for other companies. In other words, this study creates room for a new perspective on corporate sustainability practice and research.

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Relationship between total SDG score and total assets

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Relationship between environment-related SDG scores and total assets

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Relationship between social SDG scores and total assets

CSR measures by private companies

Average SDG scores by goals in z -scores

Average SDG scores by sector

ANOVA analysis of SDG scores by sector

A4 refers to ASSET4; B refers to Bloomberg; CDP refers to carbon disclosure project

Alawamleh , M. and Giacaman , S. ( 2020 ), “ Corporate social responsibility impacts on Palestinian and Jordanian consumer purchasing ”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis , Vol. 29 No. 4 , pp. 891 - 919 .

Bag , S. and Pretorius , J.H.C. ( 2020 ), “ Relationships between industry 4.0, sustainable manufacturing and circular economy: proposal of a research framework ”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis ,

Ferro , C. , Padin , C. , Høgevold , N. , Svensson , G. and Varela , J.C.S. ( 2019 ), “ Validating and expanding a framework of a triple bottom line dominant logic for business sustainability through time and across contexts ”, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing , Vol. 34 No. 1 , pp. 95 - 116 .

Friede , G. , Busch , T. and Bassen , A. ( 2015 ), “ ESG and financial performance: aggregated evidence from more than 2000 empirical studies ”, Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment , Vol. 5 No. 4 , pp. 210 - 233 .

Giannarakis , G. ( 2014 ), “ The determinants influencing the extent of CSR disclosure ”, International Journal of Law and Management , Vol. 56 No. 5 , pp. 393 - 416 .

Gjølberg , M. ( 2009 ), “ Measuring the immeasurable? Constructing an index of CSR practices and CSR performance in 20 countries ”, Scandinavian Journal of Management , Vol. 25 No. 1 , pp. 10 - 22 .

Global Footprint Network . ( 2019 ), “ Ecological footprint explorer ”, available at: http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/

Graafland , J.J. and Eijffinger , S.C.W. ( 2004 ), “ Corporate social responsibility of Dutch companies: benchmarking, transparency and robustness ”, De Economist , Vol. 152 No. 3 , pp. 403 - 426 .

Guenther , E. , Hoppe , H. and Poser , C. ( 2006 ), “ Environmental corporate social responsibility of firms in the mining and oil and gas industries: current status quo of reporting following GRI guidelines ”, Greener Management International , Vol. 53 , pp. 7 - 25 .

Hu , A.H. Huang , L.H. and Chang , Y. ( 2016 ), “ Assessing corporate sustainability of the ICT sector in Taiwan on the basis of UN sustainable development goals ”, pp. 1 - 6 .

Kim , H. and Lee , T.H. ( 2018 ), “ Strategic CSR communication: a moderating role of transparency in trust building ”, International Journal of Strategic Communication , Vol. 12 No. 2 , pp. 107 - 124 .

Lathabhavan , R. ( 2021 ), “ Sustainable business practices and challenges in Asia: a systematic review ”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis , Vol. 30 No. 3 , pp. 778 - 794 .

Macellari , M. , Gusmerotti , N.M. , Frey , M. and Testa , F. ( 2018 ), “ Embedding biodiversity and ecosystem services in corporate sustainability: a strategy to enable sustainable development goals ”, Business Strategy and Development , Vol. 1 No. 4 , pp. 244 - 255 .

Martinuzzi , A. , Schönherr , N. and Findler , F. ( 2017 ), “ Exploring the interface of CSR and the sustainable development goals ”, Transnational Corporations , Vol. 24 No. 3 , pp. 33 - 47 .

Nazari , J.A. , Hrazdil , K. and Mahmoudian , F. ( 2017 ), “ Assessing social and environmental performance through narrative complexity in CSR reports ”, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics , Vol. 13 No. 2 , pp. 166 - 178 .

Pérez , A. and Del Bosque , I.R. ( 2013 ), “ Measuring CSR image: three studies to develop and to validate a reliable measurement tool ”, Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 118 No. 2 , pp. 265 - 286 .

Riantani , S. and Nurzamzam , H. ( 2015 ), “ Analysis of company size, financial leverage, and profitability and it’s effect to CSR disclosure ”, Jurnal Dinamika Manajemen , Vol. 6 No. 2 , pp. 203 - 213 .

Sala , S. ( 2020 ), “ Chapter 3 – triple bottom line, sustainability and sustainability assessment, an Overview ”, in Ren , J. et al. (Eds), Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future , Elsevier , Cambridge, MA , pp. 47 - 72 .

Schneider , A. and Meins , E. ( 2012 ), “ Two dimensions of corporate sustainability assessment: towards a comprehensive framework ”, Business Strategy and the Environment , Vol. 21 No. 4 , pp. 211 - 222 .

Seele , P. and Chesney , M. ( 2017 ), “ Toxic sustainable companies: a critique on the shortcomings of current corporate sustainability ratings and a definition of ‘financial toxicity’ ”, Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment , Vol. 7 No. 2 , pp. 139 - 146 .

Sethi , S.P. , Martell , T.F. and Demir , M. ( 2017 ), “ Enhancing the role and effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports: the missing element of content verification and integrity assurance ”, Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 144 No. 1 , pp. 59 - 82 .

Shayan , N.F. , Mohabbati-Kalejahi , N. , Sepideh , A. and Zahed , M.A. ( 2022 ), “ Sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a framework for corporate social responsibility (CSR) ”, Sustainability , Vol. 14 No. 3 , p. 1222 .

Singh , S. and Mittal , S. ( 2019 ), “ Analysis of drivers of CSR practices’ implementation among family firms in India: a stakeholder’s perspective ”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis , Vol. 27 No. 4 , pp. 947 - 971 .

Stafford-Smith , M. , Griggs , D. , Gaffney , O. , Ullah , F. , Reyers , B. , Kanie , N. , Stigson , B. , Shrivastava , P. , Leach , M. and O’Connell , D. ( 2017 ), “ Integration: the key to implementing the sustainable development goals ”, Sustainability Science , Vol. 12 No. 6 , pp. 911 - 919 .

Svensson , G. , Ferro , C. , Hogevold , N. , Padin , C. , Varela , J. and Sarstedt , M. ( 2018 ), “ Framing the triple bottom line approach: direct and mediation effects between economic, social and environmental elements ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol. 197 , pp. 972 - 991 .

United Nations . ( 2016 ), “ Final list of proposed sustainable development goal indicators ”, available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/11803Official-List-of-Proposed-SDG-Indicators.pdf

United Nations ( 2021 ), “ Sustainable development goals: the 17 goals ”, available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

Westerman , J.W. , Rao , M.B. , Vanka , S. and Gupta , M. ( 2020 ), “ Sustainable human resource management and the triple bottom line: multi-stakeholder strategies, concepts, and engagement ”, Human Resource Management Review , Vol. 30 No. 3 , p. 100742 .

Yadav , N. and Mankavil Kovil Veettil , N. ( 2021 ), “ Developing a comprehensive business case for sustainability: an inductive study ”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print , doi: 10.1108/IJOA-04-2020-2146 .

van Zanten , J.A. and van Tulder , R. ( 2018 ), “ Multinational enterprises and the sustainable development goals: an institutional approach to corporate engagement ”, Journal of International Business Policy , Vol. 1 Nos 3/4 , pp. 208 - 233 .

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Dasom Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Governance and Technology for Sustainability at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt University in sociology and has a master’s degree in economics from Kyoto University ( www.dasomlee.com ).

David J. Hess is the James Thornton Fant Chair in Sustainability Studies and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, where he is also the Director of the Program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies ( www.davidjhess.net ).

Related articles

We’re listening — tell us what you think, something didn’t work….

Report bugs here

All feedback is valuable

Please share your general feedback

Join us on our journey

Platform update page.

Visit emeraldpublishing.com/platformupdate to discover the latest news and updates

Questions & More Information

Answers to the most commonly asked questions here

International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility Cover Image

  • Search by keyword
  • Search by citation

Page 1 of 2

Assessment of corporate social responsibility practices in selected public libraries in South-West and North-Central, Nigeria

This study explored corporate social responsibility practices in selected public libraries in south-west and north-central Nigeria. The study adopts multiple case-study design, and qualitative research approac...

  • View Full Text

Navigating the myriad of corporate quality standards: a CSR and stakeholder perspective

Quality standards (QS) (e.g., ISO 9001) play an important role in assuring the quality of goods and services for organizational stakeholders on a global scale. Recent work has highlighted the role of QS in com...

Translating brand reputation into equity from the stakeholder’s theory: an approach to value creation based on consumer’s perception & interactions

This study is to examine the translation of a reputable brand into equity and how consumers’ perceptions can trigger value creation from commitment and pursuit of CSR by an organization and adopting the same a...

Synthesising synergies between CSR and BHR for corporate accountability: an integrated approach

While an emerging literature considers Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as obligatory, voluntarism has dominated the scholarship and policymaking related to CSR. Almost parallel to this literature, the fi...

Corporate social responsibility communication in the ICT sector: digital issues, greenwashing, and materiality

Digitalization brings with it new social and governance issues and heightened responsibility, particularly for corporations. In recent years, society has demanded more transparency from companies about digital...

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Responsible government and responsible business: the challenge of harnessing CSR in a new epoch

Much has been written of the implications for government policy on ‘responsible business’ but a comprehensive review of the subject is needed. This literature review will offer an assessment of varied insights...

Is capital structure associated with corporate social responsibility?

Based on a total of 1,590 listed non-financial firms on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchanges covering the period of 2007 ~ 2020, this study examines whether a firm's capital structure is affected...

Towards a definition of sustainable banking - a consolidated approach in the context of guidelines and strategies

Sustainable development efforts, initiated by the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change, are bringing banking to the center of the debate, which calls for, among other things, sustainable banking. In ...

Correction: When and where does it pay to be green? – A look into socially responsible investing and the cost of equity capital

The original article was published in International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 2023 8 :1

How Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA) impacts portfolio allocations: an experiment

If a firm signals that they identify on one end of the conservative-liberal spectrum, will political affiliation help predict how an investor will allocate their investment dollars to that firm? Using an exper...

Challenges of CSR in Sub-Saharan Africa: clarifying the gaps between the regulations and human rights issues

This paper discusses the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. The main purpose is to highlight and clarify the gaps between CSR regulations and human righ...

When and where does it pay to be green? – A look into socially responsible investing and the cost of equity capital

We investigate the circumstances under which socially responsible investing (SRI) enhances firm long-term financial performance, and therefore provides incentives for firms to self-regulate their environmental...

The Correction to this article has been published in International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 2023 8 :4

Corporate social responsibility. A strategy for social and territorial sustainability

Globalization and financial processes have progressively generated an intense and problematic phenomenon of disconnection between companies and their territories. Breaking of the spatial link has often led to ...

“Issues emanating from business impact on climate, environmental sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility): steps towards pragmatism in extant realities”: “Brand translation to equity from ‘CSR as a potential tool in climate change mitigation and enhancing financial performances in organizations”

The relationship between ‘CSR and Brands to the sustainable business environment coupled with climatic changes and environmental issues; ‘while emphasizing the potentials of ‘CSR from brand reputation translat...

Wheat and chaff: the degree to which strategic management principles are integrated within corporate social responsibility reporting among large Canadian firms

This empirical study examines the degree to which strategic principles are reflected in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting practices among Canada’s largest corporations. In a two-phased approa...

ESG in the boardroom: evidence from the Malaysian market

This study examines the influence of boards’ characteristics with respect to independence, diversity, and diligence on the environment, social, governance (ESG) disclosure among Bursa Malaysia companies. The b...

New corporate social responsibility brand evaluation in a developing country: Uzbekistan

Organizations strive to satisfy salient and unmet consumer needs by providing value through their products and services. If environmentally sustainable “green” brands successfully exist by addressing environme...

Sustainability performance indicator trends: a Canadian industry-based analysis

This study aims to examine the trends in the sustainability performance indicators disclosed in sustainability reports by Canadian companies. Our sample is comprised of eight companies in four sectors and our ...

How does CSR of food company affect customer loyalty in the context of COVID-19: a moderated mediation model

Because of COVID-19 in the world, enterprises and consumers pay more and more attention to environmental protection, food safety and health issues. The purpose of this paper is to take China's food company as ...

Management control systems in response to social and environmental risk in large Nordic companies

This empirical study investigates the relationships between management control systems and social and environmental risks. Building on Simons’ Levers of Control conceptual framework, this study proposes that c...

Corporate social responsibility in international business literature: results from text data mining of the Journal of International Business Studies

Corporate social responsibility has been an important theme in management at least since the 1960s. International business became a recognized subfield in management around the same time. Logically, there migh...

The long-term transformation of the concept of CSR: towards a more comprehensive emphasis on sustainability

This article adds to the discussion of the long-term transformation of CSR, presenting a perspective on the interplay between CSR debate and public discourse on business responsibility. 50 years after Milton F...

Novel CSR & novel coronavirus: corporate social responsibility inside the frame of coronavirus pandemic in Greece

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) becomes popular as big international firms gain more power than states and global issues engender concerns to people from all over the world. The pandemic of novel coronav...

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): motivations and challenges of a Multinational Enterprise (MNE) subsidiary’s engagement with host communities in Ghana

This paper aims to explore the motivations and challenges of engaging host communities in CSR practices within the context of Newmont Ahafo Mines (NAM), a subsidiary of a Multinational Mining Enterprise (MNE) ...

Examining the role of environmental corporate social responsibility in building green corporate image and green competitive advantage

Green concern is making a profound impact on building green competitive advantage (GCA) across the globe. Apparel sector of Bangladesh is at crossroads regarding sustainability of firms. Green initiatives are ...

Cultural influence on innovativeness - links between “The Culture Map” and the “Global Innovation Index”

In the ongoing debate on the relation of cultural differences and national innovativeness this research aims to find out which of the seven cultural dimensions of The Culture Map (communicating, evaluating, leadi...

CSR reporting by Chinese and Western MNEs: patterns combining formal homogenization and substantive differences

In light of the growing economic might and intensification of global activities of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNE), this paper looks into the nature of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) repor...

Microfinance institutions’ operational self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa: empirical evidence

The topic of financial sustainability in microfinance institutions has become more important as an increasing number of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) seek operational self-sufficiency, which translates into...

Do Millennials pay attention to Corporate Social Responsibility in comparison to previous generations? Are they motivated to lead in times of transformation? A qualitative review of generations, CSR and work motivation

The purpose of this qualitative review is to analyze empirical studies on whether the existing generations differ in their work beliefs, i.e. in their internal CSR perceptions and their leadership motivation, ...

Impact of strategic management, corporate social responsibility on firm performance in the post mandate period: evidence from India

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is like a chameleon, that changes its colour according to the context it is in. In the developed economy, it takes the form of sustainability and/ or philanthropy, whereas...

Green bonds issuance: insights in low- and middle-income countries

Former reports of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) tended to focus on the equity side of investing, and today green bonds also offer and introduce sustainability factors. This paper is about the rele...

Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder engagement in Ghana’s mining sector: a case study of Newmont Ahafo mines

Even though the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been applauded for several decades, the concept of stakeholder engagement is relatively new to the Ghanaian mining sector. This study invest...

Sustainability in the automotive industry, importance of and impact on automobile interior – insights from an empirical survey

Sustainability is currently one of the main issues in all media and in society as a whole and is increasingly discussed in science from different sides and areas. Especially for the automotive industry, sustai...

Implementing part-time leadership as instrument for sustainable HR management

This paper discusses the suitability of part-time leadership as instrument for a sustainable Human Resources Management (HRM) policy. The concept of part-time leadership is introduced and discussed based on a ...

Looking through the African lenses: a critical exploration of the CSR activities of Chinese International Construction Companies (CICCs) in Africa

The importance of Chinese International Construction Companies (CICCs) within the construction sector in Africa can no longer be ignored, as these firms hold a considerable amount of market share within the Af...

Mechanisms for development in corporate citizenship: a multi-level review

Social Responsibility, referred to in this study as Corporate Citizenship (CC) has experienced continued growth in significance among academics and corporate leaders. The absence of a multi-level approach to w...

Competition and microfinance institutions’ performance: evidence from India

This paper empirically examines whether competition (measured by using the new measure of competition, the Boone Indicator) moderates the relationship between Microfinance Institutions’ (MFIs) social and finan...

Optimal growth under socially responsible investment: a dynamic theoretical model of the trade-off between financial gains and emotional rewards

Socially responsible investment (SRI) evolved, along the last two decades, from an almost unexplored topic in science to a recurrent theme of research and debate in Economics and Finance. The growing interest ...

Understanding the purpose of benefit corporations: an empirical study on the Italian case

Rethinking the traditional understanding of organizational purpose appears to be necessary. A teleological paradigm shift seems to be on its way, changing the focus of attention from considering business organ...

Climate change adaptation, coffee, and corporate social responsibility: challenges and opportunities

Climate change is making a profound impact on agricultural production across the globe. Coffee (especially the Arabica variety) is one of the most severely affected crops. Adaptive measures are therefore neede...

Corporate social responsibility and accountability: a new theoretical foundation for regulating CSR

The absence of consensus on what should constitute Corporate Social Responsibility has inhibited consistent CSR legislation around the world. This paper poses a fundamental question on what should constitute C...

CSR commitments, perceptions of hypocrisy, and recovery

This paper examines perceived hypocrisy when a failure is aligned with prior social performance. It is hypothesized that commitment to a CSR domain creates greater performance expectations thus exacerbating th...

Grey zone in – greenwash out. A review of greenwashing research and implications for the voluntary-mandatory transition of CSR

As public concern over greenwashing has grown in the last two decades, academic research has increased correspondingly, and there is now a substantial body of research addressing issues related to greenwashing...

Assessing and managing sustainability in international perspective: corporate sustainability across cultures – towards a strategic framework implementation approach

Sustainability constitutes an essential element in corporate contexts by now. Corporate sustainability may be addressed differently, either selectively or integrated. The holistic approach opted for primarily ...

Acting as a benefit corporation and a B Corp to responsibly pursue private and public benefits. The case of Paradisi Srl (Italy)

Benefit Corporations and B Corps represent alternative models of enterprise that bridge the for-profit and not-for-profit model (hybrid organizations). Italy is the first country outside the US to pass Benefit...

Purpose-driven leadership for sustainable business: From the Perspective of Taoism

In recent years, the topic of “purpose” has been actively studied and discussed by the academic scholars and business practitioners. The purpose revolution has significantly changed the way companies are doing...

Multinational companies: can they foster well-being in the eyes of the poor? Results from an empirical case study

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is supposed to benefit corporations but as well to foster the well-being of individuals, communities and society. However, there is still a lack of reliable evaluation res...

A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility

There is a long and varied history associated with the evolution of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, a historical review is missing in the academic literature that portrays the ev...

Corporate social responsibility in the Mexican oil industry: Social impact assessment as a tool for local development

Mexico’s 2008 energy reform established that Petróleos Mexicanos and its subsidiary entities could contract with individuals or corporate entities for labor and the provision of required services to improve th...

Mapping meanings of corporate social responsibility – an Australian case study

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an evolving concept that reflects various views and approaches regarding corporate relationships with broader society. This study examines the meanings and values attac...

  • Editorial Board
  • Sign up for article alerts and news from this journal

Annual Journal Metrics

2022 Speed 18 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median) 148 days submission to accept (Median)

2022 Usage  604,981 downloads 50 Altmetric mentions 

  • More about our metrics
  • ISSN: 2366-0074 (electronic)
  • ISSN: 2366-0066 (print)

New Content Item

Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for Relevance and Rigor in a Quickly Evolving, Turbulent World

  • Original Paper
  • Published: 25 November 2022
  • Volume 187 , pages 1–15, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

  • Shuili Du 1 ,
  • Assaad El Akremi 2 &
  • Ming Jia 3  

10k Accesses

12 Citations

7 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

In this article, the co-editors of the corporate responsibility: quantitative issues section of the journal provide an overview of the quantitative CSR field and offer some new perspectives on where the field is going. They highlight key issues in developing impactful, theory-driven, and ethically grounded research and call for research that examines complex problems facing businesses and the society (e.g., big data and artificial intelligence, political polarization, and the role of CSR in generating social impact). By examining topics that are under-researched, forward-looking, and socially oriented, scholars can expand the boundary of CSR’s substantive domain and produce research that helps businesses act in a long-term, socially responsible way in this quickly evolving, turbulent environment. They also discuss ways to enhance the methodological rigor of quantitative CSR research and encourage scholars to employ cutting-edge, innovative methods to shed light on the micro-level mechanisms of CSR and reveal patterns and relationships hidden in unstructured big data.

Similar content being viewed by others

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Research streams in corporate social responsibility literature: a bibliometric analysis

Ilka Marie Frerichs & Thorsten Teichert

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

Corporate Social Responsibility: Theoretical Underpinnings and Conceptual Developments

research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

The Comedy of Big Data or: Corporate Social Responsibility Today, While Corporations Wither Away?

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has flourished over the last few decades, providing significant insights into whether and how corporations should enact their societal obligations and stakeholder responsibilities. Sustainable and socially responsible development is a grand challenge for our society due to climate change, dwindling natural resources, and exacerbating social and economic inequity. Responding to this grand challenge, more than 12,000 businesses in 160 countries are signatories to the United Nations’ Global Compact, committing to aligning their business strategies and operations with socially responsible principles on human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. In 2019, the CEOs of the Business Roundtable, representing the largest US companies, released a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” that supersedes previously endorsed principles of shareholder primacy and outlines a modern standard for corporate responsibility (Business Roundtable, 2019 ). Without a doubt, CSR has entered the domain of mainstream business strategy, permeating key aspects of business decision making. At the same time, we live in a quickly evolving, turbulent world, facing unprecedented challenges, including disruptive technologies (e.g., big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology), political polarization, shifting geopolitics and international relations, and post-pandemic economic and social issues. These trends present new opportunities and challenges for corporations seeking to fulfill their social responsibility. Thus, the sizable body of CSR literature notwithstanding, we need more, not less, relevant and rigorous CSR research that examines complex and nuanced challenges and tradeoffs facing businesses today and that pushes the boundaries of the field by increasing the breadth and depth of CSR research topics.

Reflecting the prominence of CSR and the widespread scholarly enthusiasm with the topic, the CSR quantitative section of the Journal of Business Ethics receives several hundred submissions annually, of which only a small percentage are accepted for publication. The standards for publication are significantly higher than in the past for several reasons. First, as the field of CSR quantitative research matures, it becomes more difficult to provide novel and significant theoretical contributions. Previous studies on CSR have already examined many key outcomes (e.g., corporate financial performance, innovation, goodwill effect, stakeholder satisfaction and loyalty; Godfrey et al., 2009 ; Servaes & Tamayo, 2013 ; Valentine & Fleischman, 2008 ), antecedents (e.g., board and CEO characteristics, stakeholder pressure; Jia & Zhang, 2013 ; Perez-Batres et al., 2012 ), underlying psychological processes (e.g., identification, CSR attribution; Gond et al., 2017 ; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001 ), and contingencies (e.g., corporate reputation, CSR fit, stakeholder characteristics; Sen et al., 2016 ). To generate significant theoretical contributions, CSR scholars need to either incrementally advance current CSR knowledge or offer an original, dramatically new perspective on CSR-related phenomena (e.g., strategic silence on CSR communication; Carlos & Lewis, 2017 ; Wang et al., 2021a , 2021b ), both of which become increasingly difficult as the body of CSR quantitative research expands. There are, however, plenty of opportunities for relevant and rigorous CSR research that tackles current and emerging social problems and issues, such as those related to big data and artificial intelligence and those related to political polarization. In line with the most recent JBE editorial that emphasizes “reconnecting to the social in business ethics” (Islam & Greenwood, 2021 ), CSR scholarship should be future-oriented and have some degree of foresight or prescience (Corley & Gioia, 2011 ) in trying to anticipate, conceptualize, and influence significant future problems related to firms’ social responsibility. It is important to conceptualize emerging topics and engage in research that shapes the future of the business world by questioning accepted practices and promulgating new ways of doing business responsibly.

The second reason that the standards for publications are higher is methodological. The journal and reviewers have set the bar high regarding methodological clarity and rigor. Papers with a strong method section should provide a clear rationale for sample selection and construct operationalization, explain and justify model specification and data analysis approaches, and sufficiently address key methodological concerns, such as construct validity, common method bias, endogeneity issues, and robustness tests. Innovative approaches in methods, such as utilizing multiple study designs (e.g., a laboratory experiment coupled with a field survey or an archival study) and employing cutting-edge technologies in data collection and analysis (e.g., eye tracking, neuroscience tools, textual analysis, and natural language processing), are highly appreciated.

Looking at the papers submitted to the CSR quantitative section, we find that rejected papers often exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: (1) weak theoretical contribution, sometimes due to a paper’s focus on a narrow and highly incremental topic or its lack of finer-grained conceptualization and insights (e.g., main effect hypotheses with little insight into the underlying mechanism and/or contingent factors); (2) questionable methods, sometimes due to weaknesses in the study design, sampling, measurement, or data analysis or a lack of empirical support for the hypotheses; and (3) poor writing, which manifests in various ways, ranging from substantive aspects such as unconvincing motivation for the study and incoherent or weak explanatory logic for the hypotheses, to technical aspects such as grammatical and punctuation errors, typos, and improper formatting. It is not uncommon for poor writing to hinder an otherwise promising paper.

In contrast, accepted papers tend to not only focus on an important topic and have a strong theory section but also demonstrate methodological rigor and offer rich insights with theoretical and practical value. To illustrate, while most previous CSR research examines business outcomes but neglects the social outcomes of corporate social initiatives, Boodoo et al. ( 2022 ) focus on the social outcomes of corporate philanthropy in the case of health grants by corporate foundations and find that, paradoxically, health grants are less likely to go to areas with more severe health needs, thus exacerbating health inequity. This research has important implications for the social efficacy of corporate philanthropy and calls for a data-driven and needs-based approach to the distribution of corporate donations and resources. Another example is the paper by Miller et al. ( 2022 ) examining the interplay between firms and individuals in the same geographic communities and finding that firms with high CSR performance positively influence the social distancing behaviors of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research breaks new ground by expanding the scope of CSR outcomes and revealing a previously unexamined effect of CSR: how a firm’s CSR influences individuals’ ethical behavior in their communities.

As the section editors of the CSR quantitative section, we would like to share our view of where the field of CSR quantitative research is going, highlight several substantive topic areas that are timely but under-researched, as well as discuss ways to enhance the methodological rigor of research and call for the utilization of innovative methodological techniques. This editorial seeks to stimulate research on relevant, forward-looking topics and increase emphasis on methodological rigor and innovativeness.

Developing Impactful, Theory-Driven, and Ethically Grounded CSR Research

Research on CSR has been criticized for both a lack of theoretical foundations (Wang et al., 2020 ) and deficient practical impact (Barnett et al., 2020 ). Despite the tremendous growth of CSR research, we still question the value of the field and critique its insightfulness for managerial and organizational practices. The “countless” corporate investment in terms of time and money in CSR initiatives notwithstanding (Davidson et al., 2019 ), firms still struggle to determine how, where and when to devote their social and environmental efforts (Wang et al., 2020 ). Quantitative CSR researchers should move toward more novel theoretical development, stronger scientific rigor, and broader applied insight rather than filling gaps in the literature and refining analytic methods.

Impactful CSR Research

There are multiple ways to increase the potential impact of CSR research. First, we call for more research to quantitatively examine the societal and environmental outcomes of CSR. Until recently, CSR research was mainly dominated by a business-centric focus, primarily concerned with the business case of CSR and how CSR can improve firm-level outcomes such as financial performance, reputation, and competitive advantage. As a result, we know most about CSR’s impact on businesses and the various benefits for businesses, and least about how CSR affects the major societal issues it was intended to tackle (Blowfield, 2007 ). Calling for a shift in CSR research from a business-centric to a society-centric focus, Wickert ( 2021 , p. 15) urged, “We need to know more about how to effectively capture the impact of CSR beyond financial performance, as well as how different social and ecological outcomes are linked to what businesses do in the name of CSR.” Quantitative CSR research should investigate cause-effect relationships between CSR initiatives and societal outcomes such as workers’ health, equality and inclusion, biodiversity and natural environment resilience, and labor conditions and sustainable sourcing in global supply chains. It is also important to go beyond a short-term focus to examine the long-term, multifaceted, and sometimes double-edged impact of CSR on society and the environment (e.g., Luo et al., 2018 ; Wood, 2010 ). Such a socially oriented approach to quantitative CSR research will be more impactful and will broaden the predominant business case logic with social, ecological, and ethical cases (Wickert, 2021 ).

Second, producing impactful CSR research requires researchers to embrace new and bolder ideas instead of only focusing on theoretical “gaps” or methodological refinements. Impact should go beyond the narrower metric of research citations and measure whether a study pushes the boundary of existing CSR literature by tackling local and global societal problems in a quickly evolving, volatile, uncertain, and complex context. In addition to investigating “grand challenges” such as poverty, health, inequality, and climate change, researchers can produce novel insights into emergent phenomena that are significant and important to individuals, corporations, and the society, such as the changing role of CSR in an environment characterized by big data and smart technologies (Du & Xie, 2021 ) and political polarization and shifting geopolitical dynamics (Korschun et al., 2020 ), as well as the role of CSR in generating social impact and building societal resilience during major crises (e.g., the Covid pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War). Impact also comes from adopting multiple levels of analyses and innovative and rich methodological approaches such as field experiments and textual analysis using machine learning algorithms.

In summary, impactful CSR research investigates new, significant, and societally relevant topics and utilizes rich data analytic methods that better determine causation rather than just ascertain correlation. Theoretical and empirical rigor is not opposed to but rather contributes to the greater impact of quantitative CSR research.

Theory-Driven CSR Research

Theory-driven quantitative CSR research is important for several reasons. First, we need a theory-driven approach precisely because quantitative CSR research has often been criticized for being undertheorized (Wang et al., 2020 ). The field lacks both theoretical foundation and coherence despite the application of multiple theoretical perspectives, including stakeholder theory, agency theory, upper echelons theory, economic theories of information and incentives at the macro level and social exchange theory, identity theory, attribution theory, and justice theory at the micro-level. Many such theories, originated in other fields and based on the primacy of shareholder interests, either do not fit well within the CSR context or could not adequately account for the complexity of the intersection between economic, social, environmental, and governance interests that characterize the CSR field (Hilliard, 2019 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). Moreover, the field of CSR has been mainly practice-driven and empirically focused on the business case examining the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance. This phenomena-driven focus, more prominent in earlier CSR research, has hindered the theoretical development of the field, limited its theoretical insights, and favored a loose application of theories and a lack of investigation of the underlying causal mechanisms and boundary conditions (Wang et al., 2020 ).

Second, a theory-driven approach to quantitative CSR research is necessary because using sophisticated empirical methods without theory-based causal analysis at best yields shallow and misleading results (Simmons et al., 2011 ). Theory provides guidance to research questions and logical reasoning, forces discipline in methodology (i.e., measurement, data collection, analysis), and imparts meaning to empirical results (Cortina, 2016 ; Van de Ven, 2007 ; Van Maanen et al., 2007 ). Third, when authors build their quantitative study upon a strong and relevant theoretical framework from the beginning, they can more clearly explain their theoretical contributions and show what is novel, significant, and insightful in their work beyond what we already know at a theoretical level. Starting with a solid theoretical framework is crucial for producing novel and impactful insights because “identifying the uniqueness and novelty of a given approach is difficult in the absence of a solid understanding of what is already known or assumed to be true in the literature” (Shaw, 2017 , p. 821).

Responsible and Ethically Grounded CSR Research

It is simplistic to say that all CSR research will contribute to making organizations more ethical and more socially responsible. Rather than describing and taking for granted what is socially responsible and ethical in corporate actions, CSR researchers should critically investigate and assess the ethical premises and the potential positive and negative social impact of these actions. We need to not only understand the role of ethics in business, but also use principles of ethics to evaluate and prescribe the role of business in society (Islam & Greenwood, 2021 , p. 1). For example, previous research has shown that CSR actions can cause unintended harm to some stakeholders who are vulnerable and beleaguered (Willness, 2019 ) and can lead to moral hazards where firms use CSR as reputation insurance to benefit themselves at the cost of society (Luo et al., 2018 ). Responsible research on CSR implies the importance of assessing the potential unintended negative effects of CSR practices and avoiding promoting organizational practices that are harmful to vulnerable stakeholders and society.

To promote responsible quantitative CSR research, scholars need to go beyond a narrow business case perspective when examining CSR phenomena and incorporate an evaluative element to orient ethical and socially responsible corporate actions. For example, when certain CSR actions may have negative effects on firm performance, rather than suggesting that firms should not practice these socially responsible actions, responsible CSR research should reveal the underlying mechanisms for why such negative impacts might occur, understand how to minimize the negative impacts, and examine the ways that firms could better approach these CSR actions to create positive social and business value (Hideg et al., 2020 ). To make quantitative CSR research more responsible, a crucial step is to deepen the study of CSR’s nonfinancial, social and environmental impact, such as the nuanced effects of CSR on community and stakeholder well-being, poverty reduction, diversity and inclusion, and climate change.

Furthermore, when studying the social impact of CSR, researchers should examine not only antecedents and outcomes, but also the underlying processes and boundary conditions of CSR actions. A deeper understanding of the causal mechanisms and contingencies will provide guidance for more effective CSR decision making and implementation and, in turn, accentuate the social impact of organizations’ CSR initiatives. Finally, responsible and ethically grounded CSR research should take into account conflicts of interest among various stakeholder groups to help organizations better understand the priorities and the nonintentional effects of CSR on various groups. To that end, research should shift from considering CSR as an aggregate and homogeneous construct to the analysis of specific subdimensions of sustainable development. The United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) Footnote 1 include an array of more concrete, diverse and comprehensive goals as compared to the often-used broad categorization of environmental, social, and governance performance. We encourage future quantitative CSR research to examine whether and how firms’ CSR could advance specific SDGs.

Substantive Topic Areas that are Under-Researched and Forward-Looking

Our society is rapidly transforming and faces unprecedented challenges, including disruptive technologies (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology), political polarization, shifting geopolitics and international relations, and post-pandemic economic and social issues. By examining research topics that are under-researched, forward-looking, and socially oriented, quantitative CSR scholars can expand the boundary of the field’s substantive domain and produce impactful research that helps businesses act in a long-term, socially responsible way in this fast evolving, turbulent environment.

CSR in the Era of Datafication and Artificial Intelligence

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are perhaps today’s most dominant trends, transforming businesses and individual lives and presenting abundant opportunities for CSR research in the era of datafication and AI. AI refers to the ability of machines to carry out tasks by displaying intelligent, human-like behaviors (e.g., machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing; Russell & Norvig, 2016 ). Over the last decade, AI technologies have experienced exponential growth and are being deployed on a rapidly increasing scale in many industries ranging from manufacturing, transportation, and communications, to retail, healthcare, and financial services. Powered by big data and continuously improving algorithms, AI systems can automate decision making, boost productivity and economy, and liberate individuals from tedious and repetitive work. The promised benefits of AI are numerous. For example, self-driving cars can dramatically reduce car accidents; AI-based healthcare could help solve the elderly care crisis in many developed countries; and smart and precision agriculture can reduce the usage of water, fertilizer, and pesticides while increasing yield.

At the same time, however, increasing datafication and the widespread deployment of AI have triggered many ethical and social issues and raised many urgent research questions for CSR scholars. Forward-looking scholars should broaden and deepen the conceptualization of CSR to better address the emerging ethical and societal challenges in the era of datafication and AI. For example, companies have an unprecedented responsibility to enhance the cybersecurity of their information systems and sensitive data and protect the data privacy of their stakeholders. Data breaches now occur more frequently than ever (Martin et al., 2017 ), exposing sensitive and confidential personal information of stakeholders and causing emotional stress, humiliation, and possibly financial loss. Researchers should examine the characteristics of effective cybersecurity practices that minimize the occurrence of data breaches. Relatedly, there is an urgent need to conceptualize and examine corporate responsibility in the digital space related to protecting stakeholder privacy and well-being. Individual consumers’ demographic information and behavioral data are being continuously tracked and analyzed, and the resultant insights are used in targeted advertising, content customization, and other ethically questionable business practices to achieve profit maximization (Zuboff, 2019 ). We call for research on socially responsible privacy practices that are centered around stakeholder well-being. One important research question is to examine the characteristics of corporate responsible data practices that are effective in protecting the privacy and security of stakeholders’ sensitive data. Researchers can also examine how a firm’s (ir) responsible data privacy practices influence its CSR reputation and stakeholder relationships.

Another area for future research relates to addressing the various limitations of AI and the associated ethical and social issues. Research suggests that most AI algorithms exhibit biases against minority and underprivileged groups, mirroring deep imbalances in the institutional environment and reinforcing social injustice (Zou & Schiebinger, 2018 ). Such AI biases will have profound negative social impact, especially considering that AI technologies are being deployed in many high-stakes domains, ranging from self-driving cars and mortgage lending to medical diagnosis and law enforcement. Future research can investigate the ethics of AI algorithms and the effects of AI applications on firms’ diversity, equity, and inclusion performance in the workplace and the marketplace. CSR scholars should compare and contrast various corporate approaches to dealing with AI biases and examine their efficacy in terms of the consequent social outcomes (e.g., inclusion and social equity metrics, well-being of vulnerable and disadvantaged stakeholders).

Finally, the increasing deployment of AI triggers other societal issues, such as potential large-scale unemployment due to automation and the widespread social media and smartphone addiction, all with far-reaching societal and political implications. These issues are fertile ground for relevant and impactful CSR research projects. For example, one promising area of research is to examine what are characteristics of effective corporate initiatives that reskill or upskill their employees to help them thrive in a digital, AI-mediated economy. It is also important to assess the social and business outcome of such employee-oriented CSR initiatives as well as contingent factors.

Overall, the ethical and societal challenges of datafication and AI are fertile ground for impactful CSR research. As companies navigate the uncharted territories of an increasingly AI-mediated economy, they could benefit from CSR research that sheds light on how companies can shape the future of ethical and socially responsible AI and achieve symbiosis between AI technologies and society. Relatedly, the emergence and availability of massive, unstructured big data and AI-enabled machine learning technologies (e.g., natural language processing, image processing, text, and sentiment analysis) also provide opportunities for quantitative researchers to explore new CSR topics and advance knowledge on existing topics.

CSR in a Politically Polarized Environment

We live in a world that is more politically polarized than ever, with a global political system that is undergoing profound transformation. In the United States, the disagreement has become nearly irreconcilable between Democrats and Republicans on the economy, racial justice, climate change, law enforcement, international engagement, and a long list of other issues (Pew Research Center, 2020 ). In Europe, Brexit has polarized British politics, and the rise of right-wing populism has disrupted party systems in other European countries, such as France, Germany, and Austria (Noury & Roland, 2020 ). Political polarization has also manifested itself in the global south in countries such as Brazil, India, and Kenya (Carothers & O’Donohue, 2019 ). This widening ideological divide is caused in part by economic factors related to globalization and trade openness, rising inequality, and economic crises and anxiety; in part by a cultural backlash against the multiculturism and cultural evolution of the last 50 years (i.e., evolution toward gender equality, laws against the discrimination of ethnic and sexual minorities, etc., Inglehart & Norris, 2016 ); and in part by the prevalence of social media, the social media filter bubble, and fake news (Spohr 2017 ).

Against this backdrop of the widening political fissure, corporate political activism has become a frontier area of CSR (Moorman, 2020 ; Smith & Korschun, 2018 ), as is evident from the uptick in the number of companies taking a stand on politically controversial issues. For example, the US apparel company Patagonia created a space in its stores for customers to sign a petition against President Trump’s executive order discontinuing protections of large swaths of federal parklands (Stanley, 2020 ). Dick’s Sporting Goods took a highly publicized stance on gun control by removing guns from its stores after the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting (Bomey, 2018 ). Irish airline company Ryanair ran newspaper advertisements in 2016 against Brexit, arguing that consumers would end up paying more to fly outside of the United Kingdom (Davies, 2016 ). Indeed, business leaders increasingly consider it appropriate for companies to take a stand on political issues; according to a CMO survey (Moorman, 2020 ), 47.2% of marketing leaders consider it appropriate to make changes to products and services in response to political issues, and 33.3% consider it appropriate to have executives speak out on political issues. Comparing CSR and corporate activism, Eilert and Cherup ( 2020 ) note that while CSR generally focuses on issues that are widely favored or accepted in the institutional environment (e.g., supporting education, community outreach), corporate activism tends to focus on issues that are controversial in the institutional environment (e.g., gun control, transgender rights, racial equity) and thus has a moderate to high likelihood of triggering negative stakeholder reactions. These controversial sociopolitical issues are “salient unresolved social matters on which societal and institutional opinion is split, thus potentially engendering acrimonious debate among groups” (Nalick et al., 2016 , p. 386). Corporate activism pushes the boundary of traditional CSR in the sense that while both seek to “do good” for society, corporate activism addresses issues that face barriers in their progress toward a solution and promotes social change by “placing pressures on institutions” (Den Hond & De Bakker, 2007 , p. 901).

In this polarized environment, stakeholders are more likely to view companies through a political lens and expect companies to engage in partisan and controversial sociopolitical issues (Korschun et al., 2020 ). Recent research has begun to examine important questions about corporate sociopolitical activism, such as investor reactions to corporate activism (Bhagwat et al., 2020 ), various mental models of corporate activism (Moorman, 2020 ), and the efficacy of CEO activism (Chatterji & Toffel, 2019 ). As the frontier area of CSR research, there are many promising avenues for future research on corporate sociopolitical activism. Future research can investigate key antecedent conditions of corporate sociopolitical activism (e.g., issue-, company-, and stakeholder-specific characteristics) and examine how stakeholders react differently to corporate sociopolitical activism as compared to traditional CSR initiatives. Additionally, given the inherent business risks and controversial nature of sociopolitical activism, CSR scholars should identify strategic levers that companies can use to reduce business risks while enhancing the social and business outcomes of corporate activism and investigate the underlying mechanisms for corporate sociopolitical activism to create positive social change. It is also worth examining how firms could best communicate their corporate activism initiatives and how corporate activism affects consumer reactions (e.g., consumer attitudes, relationships with the brand, and purchase decisions) and employee reactions (e.g., job satisfaction, retention rate, etc.).

A New Mode of CSR Research: Strengthening Theoretical Perspectives on the Social Impact of CSR

Decades of CSR research notwithstanding, scholars have mostly focused on the business case of CSR (i.e., how CSR could affect a firm’s financial performance) but have largely neglected the social impact of CSR (Barnett et al., 2020 ). As a result, whereas there are extensive insights as to whether, how, and when CSR contributes to the financial bottom line of a company, there are extremely limited insights as to whether, how, and when CSR activities produce their intended social impact. Together with worsening climate change, widening social and economic inequalities, recent crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have accentuated and accelerated the need for CSR scholars to take a societal turn and focus on social issues and grand challenges such as poverty, social justice, human rights, healthy societies, and a sustainable environment. We call for a new mode of CSR research, urging quantitative CSR researchers to adopt a society-centric focus and examine the social and ecological impact of CSR. Understanding and quantifying the social impacts attributable to specific CSR initiatives is a necessary first step in better guiding firms’ resource allocation to CSR and the effective design of CSR programs. Along the same line, Barnett et al., ( 2020 , p. 955) advocate a design approach in CSR research, “Taking a design approach, CSR scholars transform from passive observers and assessors of organizations into active agents in designing and redesigning organizations to create a better world. Guiding managerial decision making toward the most efficient and effective means of achieving specific impacts—positive social changes—becomes the objective of CSR research.”

It is important to strengthen the theoretical underpinning when examining the social impact of CSR. We encourage researchers to adopt a diverse range of theoretical perspectives to deepen current understanding of whether, how, and when CSR could create social impact and benefit the targeted stakeholder groups. For example, resource-based view (Barney, 2001 ; Branco & Rodrigues, 2006 ) would be pertinent in linking a firm’s unique resources and capabilities to the social efficacy of its CSR initiatives; researchers can examine whether and how CSR initiatives that leverage a firm’s unique capabilities (e.g., technical expertise, marketing capabilities, human talents) are likely to produce greater social impact. Theories on social network and social capital (Burt, 1997 ; Inkpen & Tsang, 2005 ) can add conceptual depth when examining corporate alliances, cross-sector partnerships, and stakeholder collaborations aimed at addressing complex societal and environmental problems.

Theoretical perspectives are also essential when researchers attempt to capture, categorize, and quantify the different forms and various dimensions of CSR’s social impact. Barnett et al. ( 2020 ) use the literature on development economics to highlight the need to assess not only immediate outputs from CSR activities (e.g., number of beneficiaries served, emissions, and financial performance) and outcomes associated with CSR activities (i.e., correlational evidence on societal outcomes such as reduced emissions and improved work environment), but more importantly, causal impacts attributable to CSR activities (i.e., societal outcome improvement caused by CSR activities). Innovation is a key outcome of social impact due to its power in generating positive social change (Porter & Kramer, 2011 ), thus future research on social impact can draw upon theoretical perspectives on responsible innovation (Stilgoe et al., 2013 ) and sustainable innovation (Adams et al., 2016 ; Varadarajan, 2017 ) to predict, measure, and monitor the outcomes of social and sustainable innovation attributable to CSR activities. Finally, behavioral change is an essential aspect of social impact since for many social issues, ranging from health to diversity to environmental protection, it is often the behavioral change adopted by individual stakeholders that creates the most lasting impact in the effort to solve the issue. In this sense, theories from social psychology such as theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991 ) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001 ) are applicable theoretical lens for examining processes and outcomes of desired behavioral change.

We call for more quantitative CSR research to rigorously examine the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of the social impact of CSR activities and to draw more broadly and deeply from relevant disciplinary fields like development economics, sociology, social and cognitive psychology, social work, public health, and public policy. Deepening the theoretical perspectives for this new model of socially oriented CSR research would help us accumulate new insights and help firms design CSR initiatives for greater social impact.

Enhancing the Methodological Rigor of Quantitative CSR Research

Methodological rigor contributes to the credibility of research results and is critical to the overall quality of quantitative CSR research. CSR scholars should strengthen the rigor of methodology, including research design, construct measurement, data analyses, robustness testing, ruling out alternative explanations, and so on. Below we discuss two key issues in detail, construct measurement and the issue of endogeneity.

Construct Measurement

Since measurement is the lens through which we operationalize focal constructs (as well as all control variables), measurement accuracy should be paramount even in theory specification. Quantitative CSR research may suffer from low construct validity and a weak link between CSR constructs and their observed indicators. Many published articles in the quantitative CSR field do not provide sufficient evidence to draw strong conclusions about construct validity. Construct validity indicates the confidence that researchers have that the indicators used (i.e., measures) are good proxies of the targeted constructs (Aguinis & Vandenberg, 2014 ). In the absence of strong evidence of construct validity, substantive research results are generally inconclusive.

Poor construct measurement poses a serious threat to quantitative CSR research. Indeed, there are some critical and difficult issues that hinder the development, evaluation, and refinement of good measures of critical constructs in quantitative research methods. This includes the lack of precision of the underlying constructs, the use of single indicators and categorical measures to represent complex concepts, the inadequate assessment of reliability when self-reported scales are used, and insufficient attention to measurement levels and measurement invariance (Aguinis & Edwards, 2014 ; Cortina et al., 2017 ). To mitigate these measurement concerns, quantitative CSR researchers should more clearly define constructs, ensure that measures are conceptually related to their constructs, and carefully specify the nature and direction of relationships between concepts and measures (Aguinis & Edwards, 2014 ; Cortina et al., 2017 ). Finally, quantitative CSR research needs to establish more validity generalizations through meta-analyses and structural equation modeling (Cortina et al., 2017 ).

Causal Inferences and the Issue of Endogeneity

Causal claims are important and frequently made in quantitative CSR studies. However, to draw causal inferences, empirical studies must satisfy three conditions: (a) the cause must precede the effect temporally, (b) the cause and effect must be reliably associated, and (c) the relationship between the cause and effect must not be explained by other causes (Antonakis et al., 2010 ). The clearest way to establish causality is through randomized experiments. Unfortunately, random assignment is often impractical in CSR research, where studies are conducted in organizational settings or involve units of observation at higher levels of analysis than the individual, such as firms. Since CSR actions are not randomly assigned, nonexperimental studies are prevalent in quantitative CSR research. A major threat to the validity of these nonexperimental studies (e.g., those based on archival data or survey data) is endogeneity Researchers should address the issue of endogeneity with a combination of theoretical logic, research design, statistical analysis, and post hoc robustness tests.

Endogeneity can arise from various sources, such as omitted variables (i.e., unobserved heterogeneity), simultaneity (i.e., reverse causality or feedback loop), measurement error (i.e., systematic error or common method variance), or selection (i.e., self-selection or sample bias) (Wooldridge, 2010 ), which have various impacts and necessitate different remedies (Clougherty et al., 2016 ; Hill et al., 2021 ; Semadeni et al., 2014 ). Multiple methodological reviews show that statistical techniques used to deal with endogeneity, such as the instrumental variable method, are frequently misapplied or not adequately justified and explained (Wolfolds & Siegel, 2019 ). Moreover, even if multiple causes of endogeneity can affect the same estimated relationship in a single study, there is a need to clearly focus on specific causes of endogeneity, as there is no generic remedy for general endogeneity issues, but there is an extensive toolbox of methods adequate to deal with specific causes of endogeneity (Hill et al., 2021 ). Table 1 provides a summary of the different causes of endogeneity and the appropriate remedies.

Specifically, when endogeneity is caused by omitted variable bias, techniques such as control variables, fixed effects, sensitivity analysis, and instrumental variables may offer solutions to help remedy endogeneity (Wu et al., 2022 ). When the cause of endogeneity is simultaneity, dynamic panel techniques, instrumental variables, using exogenous events, or lagging the endogenous variable can be used to address endogeneity. For measurement error, the use of latent variable methods, instrumental estimation and CMV treatment are used to address endogeneity. Finally, Heckman method, differences in differences, and regression discontinuity are the more appropriate techniques when endogeneity is caused by selection biases. While it is impossible for any one study to fully mitigate all endogeneity concerns, we echo the recommendation by Hill et al. ( 2021 ) that, to sufficiently address endogeneity issues, researchers need to (i) offer a clear diagnosis of the endogeneity threat and explicitly establish whether and why a specific cause of endogeneity exists in a study, (ii) justify and clearly explain why the chosen technique is appropriate for addressing the specific source of endogeneity in the context of the focal study, and (iii) increase the transparency in the resulting prognosis and make precise claims about the conclusions regarding endogeneity treatment.

Employing Innovative Methods to Test Hypotheses

Different methods have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Field surveys and archival studies have higher external validity but tend to suffer from issues such as common method biases, inadequate construct measurement, and endogeneity. Randomized laboratory experiments ensure internal validity and shed light into causal links between constructs, yet they often have low external validity. Innovative methods have been employed to strengthen traditional laboratory experiments, field surveys, and/or archival studies. With the booming development of science and technology, we have seen increasing applications of innovative technologies in quantitative research methods, such as eye trackers, face readers, and cognitive neuroscience techniques. These high-tech approaches allow researchers to directly observe the cognitive, emotional and neural processes underlying individual reactions to CSR, shedding light on the micro-level mechanism of how individual stakeholders process CSR-related information and corroborating research findings based on self-reported measures. Below we discuss several state-of-art experimental study technologies that are suitable for CSR research.

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking is a tool to measure eye movements (Holmqvist et al., 2011 ; Meissner & Oll, 2019 ). Eye-tracking studies generally focus on determining where people distribute their attention (such as fixation points or gaze points); to be more specific, eye tracking is used to locate pupil positions and to calculate fixation times and durations with the help of digital images (Ashby et al., 2016 ). One of the most common basic principles of eye tracking is the “eye-mind assumption,” which asserts that people’s attention at certain information is controlled by their brain. Therefore, through monitoring eye movements, eye tracking can reveal what is going on in the brain. For instance, assuming a researcher wants to understand how stakeholders read a CSR report and which parts of the report hold their attention, traditional research methods, such as self-reported behavior, can be inaccurate and misleading. Using eye-tracking data, we can directly assess readers’ fixation duration and times on target areas, thus helping us better understand how stakeholders read a CSR report and differentially process various parts of the report content.

The eye is the window of the soul, and approximately 80% of the external information received by people comes from the visual channel via the eyes; meanwhile, the processes of people’s psychological activities are reflected through their eyes. In an experimental setup, eye-tracking systems allow researchers to record the movements of a participant’s eyes during behavioral processes, thus providing “insights into the cognitive processes underlying a wide variety of human behaviors” (Ashby et al., 2016 , p. 96). Eye-tracking technology is an intuitive and effective method that could be employed in lab experimental settings to reveal the micro-level cognitive processes of stakeholders’ reaction to CSR activities.

Neuroscience Tools

Neuroscience tools enable researchers to have a deeper and more direct understanding of brain activities during decision making (Robertson et al., 2017 ). Common neuroscience tools include fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), EEG (electroencephalogram), and fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). The basic principle of these neuroscience tools is that an individual's specific psychological activities will give rise to the activation and excitement of a certain brain area or neurons and thus changes in blood dynamics. Neuroscientific technology can help researchers observe the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms of individual reactions. For instance, deontic justice theory holds that individuals often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of justice; however, there is still no coherent framework for explaining how individuals produce and experience deontic justice. Cropanzano et al. ( 2017 ) advanced a theoretical model to provide further understanding into the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms of deontic justice with the help of neuroscience tools. If researchers want to explore what stakeholders think when they make judgments about firms’ CSR activities, the neuroscience techniques could be very useful.

Apart from changes in attention and the brain, facial expression variations also provide researchers with useful information, as facial expressions generally reflect an individual’s emotions and affective states. FaceReader is an advanced tool to automatically analyze people’s facial expressions and provides researchers with an objective evaluation of subjects’ affective states (Noldus, 2014 ). In many cases, scholars need to test how subjects react after reading some critical information about firms. Instead of designing a survey to measure individuals’ emotions and feelings in an indirect way, it is more direct and more reliable to observe their facial expression changes with the help of FaceReader.

Machine Learning and Analysis of Unstructured Data

Eye tracker, FaceReader, and a variety of neuroscience tools could be employed in experimental studies to reveal the cognitive and affective mechanisms of stakeholder reactions to CSR, further enhancing the internal validity of experimental studies. On the other hand, tools such as machine learning and analysis of unstructured data are very useful and allow researchers to systematically extract the patterns and relationships hidden in massive amounts of unstructured data.

Unstructured data are commonly understood as “information that either does not have a predefined data model or is not organized in a predefined manner” (Wikipedia, 2022 ). An estimated 80% of data held by firms today are unstructured data, and they are growing 15 times faster than structured data (Balducci & Marinova, 2018 ). Unstructured data are multifaceted and include verbal (e.g., text, audio) and nonverbal (e.g., image, facial expression, geographic/spatial location) data. As compared to structured data, unstructured data allow researchers to have more flexibility for theoretical discovery and uncover richer conceptual and managerial insights (Balducci & Marinova, 2018 ; Li et al., 2019 ). Table 2 provides a summary of different types of unstructured data and some illustrative examples of prior literature analyzing these unstructured data.

Machine learning can undertake complex analysis with massive amounts of unstructured data. Machine learning techniques in the natural language processing field include topic modeling and word embedding models. Specifically, topic modeling assumes that documents are generated by certain topics, and one topic consists of a set of key words and phrases. Topic modeling extracts latent themes contained in a set of documents and represents the main content in the texts. Latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) is one of the most robust methods in topic modeling (Blei et al., 2003 ), which is an unsupervised machine learning technique that automatically extracts potential topics without human-labeled texts. Topic modeling infers the probability distribution of keywords across topics and the distribution of topics across documents by analyzing the patterns of word occurrence in a voluminous corpus. Based on the outputs of LDA analysis, researchers need to interpret and label certain themes based on the top keywords comprising the topic distribution. Topic modeling can be utilized to analyze key characteristics of CSR practices from corporate disclosures such as annual reports and sustainability reports. For corporate unethical behaviors, Brown et al. ( 2020 ) employed a Bayesian topic modeling algorithm to analyze public firms’ 10-K narratives and produce a valid set of semantically meaningful topics to detect financial misreporting.

In addition to topic modeling, the word embedding model is based on the logic that words illustrate similar meanings when they co-occur with the same neighboring words (Harris, 1954 ). The model can encode words or phrases as numeric vectors through a number of iterations based on a large textual corpus, which provides an effective way to measure the semantics. The new technology of “ word2vec ” is a breakthrough in natural language processing to quantify word vectors (Mikolov et al., 2013 ). Additionally, word vectors allow us to explore the relationship between two words via simple vector arithmetic, such as the cosine similarity, and find the synonyms of seed words. Employing the word embedding model, scholars have analyzed various unstructured data to describe corporate culture (Li et al., 2021 ), measure CEOs’ personality traits (Harrison et al., 2019 ), and identify customer needs (Timoshenko & Hauser, 2019 ).

There are other ways to employ textual analysis to distill the essential facts and trends in the textual information and to reveal the hidden and meaningful information contained in these texts. Prior studies on textual analysis utilize lexical analysis and syntactic structure, such as textual tone, readability, vagueness, and concreteness (Du & Kun, 2021 ; Fabrizio & Kim, 2019 ; Muslu et al., 2019 ). For example, Fabrizio and Kim ( 2019 ) find that firms are likely to use more obfuscating language to disclose their negative environmental information to blur the negative content and increase the information processing costs of the recipient (Fabrizio & Kim, 2019 ). Muslu et al. ( 2019 ) find that high-quality CSR disclosure, calculated based on tone, readability, length, and the numeric and horizon content of CSR report narrative, are associated with more accurate analyst forecasts. Sentiment analysis is another useful approach to detect individuals’ affect or opinions from unstructured data (e.g., online product reviews, social media posts). Sentiment analysis detects the polarity of texts, assessing whether individuals are expressing any form of positive or negative sentiment toward an object. Etter et al. ( 2018 ) employ sentiment analysis of social media data to evaluate affective responses of individuals toward an organization. Overall, unstructured data and cutting-edge machine learning techniques provide exciting opportunities for CSR researchers to examine new topics and extend literature in innovative ways.

We hope this editorial offers new perspectives on how to conduct impactful and rigorous quantitative CSR research. The field of quantitative CSR research has grown dramatically over the last several decades, accumulating a great deal of insights, yet at the same time, it becomes harder to publish papers in this field due to increasing expectations for theoretical contributions and methodological rigor. We hope this editorial can spur more quantitative CSR research that examines complex problems facing businesses today, that expands the substantive domain of the field by increasing the breadth and depth of research topics, and that employs rigorous and innovative methods to test hypotheses.

United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals are: no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions, partnerships to achieve goals.

Adams, R., Jeanrenaud, S., Bessant, J., Denyer, D., & Overy, P. (2016). Sustainability-oriented innovation: A systematic review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18 (2), 180–205.

Article   Google Scholar  

Aguinis, H., & Edwards, J. R. (2014). Methodological wishes for the next decade and how to make wishes come true. Journal of Management Studies, 51 (1), 143–174.

Aguinis, H., & Vandenberg, R. J. (2014). An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: Improving research quality before data collection. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1 (1), 569–595.

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50 (2), 179–211.

Antonakis, J., Bendahan, S., Jacquart, P., & Lalive, R. (2010). On making causal claims: A review and recommendations. The Leadership Quarterly, 21 (6), 1086–1120.

Ashby, N. J. S., Johnson, J. G., Krajbich, I., & Wedel, M. (2016). Applications and innovations of eye-movement research in judgment and decision making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 29 (2–3), 96–102.

Balducci, B., & Marinova, D. (2018). Unstructured data in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46 (4), 557–590.

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52 (1), 1–26.

Barnett, M. L., Henriques, I., & Husted, B. W. (2020). Beyond good intentions: Designing CSR initiatives for greater social impact. Journal of Management, 46 (6), 937–964.

Barney, J. B. (2001). Resource-based theories of competitive advantage: A ten-year retrospective on the resource-based view. Journal of Management, 27 (6), 643–650.

Bhagwat, Y., Warren, N. L., Beck, J. T., & Watson, G. F. (2020). Corporate sociopolitical activism and firm value. Journal of Marketing, 84 (5), 1–21.

Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., & Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3 , 993–1022.

Google Scholar  

Blowfield, M. (2007). Reasons to be cheerful? What we know aboutcsr’s impact. Third World Quarterly, 28 (4), 683–695.

Bomey, N. (2018). Dick’s sporting goods bans sales of assault-style weapons after Parkland, Florida school shooting. USA Today.

Boodoo, M. U., Henriques, I., & Husted, B. W. (2022). Putting the “love of humanity” back in corporate philanthropy: The case of health grants by corporate foundations. Journal of Business Ethics, 178 , 415–428. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04807-2

Branco, M. C., & Rodrigues, L. L. (2006). Corporate social responsibility and resource-based perspectives. Journal of Business Ethics, 69 (2), 111–132.

Brown, N. C., Crowley, R. M., & Elliott, W. B. (2020). What are you saying? Using topic to detect financial misreporting. Journal of Accounting Research, 58 (1), 237–291.

Burt, R. S. (1997). The contingent value of social capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42 (2), 339–365.

Carlos, W. C., & Lewis, B. W. (2017). Strategic silence: Withholding certification status as a hypocrisy avoidance tactic. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63 (1), 130–169.

Carothers, T., & O’Donohue, A. (2019). Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization . Brookings Institution Press.

Chatterji, A. K., & Toffel, M. W. (2019). Assessing the impact of CEO activism. Organization & Environment, 32 (2), 159–185.

Clougherty, J. A., Duso, T., & Muck, J. (2016). Correcting for self-selection based endogeneity in management research. Organizational Research Methods, 19 (2), 286–347.

Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory building: What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 36 (1), 12–32.

Cortina, J. M. (2016). Defining and operationalizing theory. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37 (8), 1142–1149.

Cortina, J. M., Aguinis, H., & DeShon, R. P. (2017). Twilight of dawn or of evening? A century of research methods in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102 (3), 274–290.

Cropanzano, R. S., Massaro, S., & Becker, W. J. (2017). Deontic justice and organizational neuroscience. Journal of Business Ethics, 144 (4), 733–754.

Davidson, R. H., Dey, A., & Smith, A. J. (2019). CEO materialism and corporate social responsibility. The Accounting Review, 94 (1), 101–126.

Davies, P. (2016). Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary campaigns for yes vote in brexit referendum. Travel Weekly.

Den Hond, F., & De Bakker, F. G. A. (2007). Ideologically motivated activism: How activist groups influence corporate social change activities. Academy of Management Review, 32 (3), 901–924.

Du, S., & Kun, Y. (2021). Do corporate social responsibility reports convey value relevant information? Evidence from report readability and tone. Journal of Business Ethics, 172 (2), 253–274.

Du, S., & Xie, C. (2021). Paradoxes of artificial intelligence in consumer markets: Ethical challenges and opportunities. Journal of Business Research, 129 , 961–974.

Eilert, M., & Cherup, A. N. (2020). The activist company: Examining a company’s pursuit of societal change through corporate activism using an institutional theoretical lens. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 39 (4), 461–476.

Etter, M., Colleoni, E., Illia, L., Meggiorin, K., & D’Eugenio, A. (2018). Measuring organizational legitimacy in social media: Assessing citizens’ judgments with sentiment analysis. Business & Society, 57 (1), 60–97.

Fabrizio, K. R., & Kim, E. H. (2019). Reluctant disclosure and transparency: Evidence from environmental disclosures. Organization Science, 30 (6), 1207–1231.

Godfrey, P. C., Merrill, C. B., & Hansen, J. M. (2009). The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: An empirical test of the risk management hypothesis. Strategic Management Journal, 30 (4), 425–445.

Gond, J. P., El Akremi, A., Swaen, V., & Babu, N. (2017). The psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility: A person-centric systematic review. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38 (2), 225–246.

Harris, Z. S. (1954). Distributional structure. Word, 10 (2–3), 146–162.

Harrison, J. S., Thurgood, G. R., Boivie, S., & Pfarrer, M. D. (2019). Measuring CEO personality: Developing, validating, and testing a linguistic tool. Strategic Management Journal, 40 (8), 1316–1330.

Hideg, I., DeCelles, K. A., & Tihanyi, L. (2020). From the editors: Publishing practical and responsible research in AMJ. Academy of Management Journal, 63 (6), 1681–1686.

Hill, A. D., Johnson, S. G., Greco, L. M., O’Boyle, E. H., & Walter, S. L. (2021). Endogeneity: A review and agenda for the methodology-practice divide affecting micro and macro research. Journal of Management, 47 (1), 105–143.

Hilliard, I. (2019). The limitations of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A philosophy at odds with its surroundings. In I. Hilliard (Ed.), Coherency management: An Alternative to CSR in a Changing World (1st ed., pp. 1–25). Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Holmqvist, K., Nystrom, M., Andersson, R., Dewhurst, R., Jarodzka, H., & van de Weijer, J. (2011). Eye tracking, a comprehensive guide to methods and measures . Oxford University Press.

Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. SSRN Electronic Journal . https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2818659

Inkpen, A. C., & Tsang, E. W. (2005). Social capital, networks, and knowledge transfer. Academy of Management Review, 30 (1), 146–165.

Islam, G., & Greenwood, M. (2021). Reconnecting to the social in business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 170 (1), 1–4.

Jia, M., & Zhang, Z. (2013). Critical mass of women on BODs, multiple identities, and corporate philanthropic disaster response: Evidence from privately owned Chinese firms. Journal of Business Ethics, 118 (2), 303–317.

Korschun, D., Martin, K. D., & Vadakkepatt, G. (2020). Marketing’s role in understanding political activity . SAGE Publications.

Book   Google Scholar  

Lee, J. G., & Kang, M. (2015). Geospatial big data: Challenges and opportunities. Big Data Research, 2 (2), 74–81.

Li, K., Mai, F., Shen, R., & Yan, X. (2021). Measuring corporate culture using machine learning. The Review of Financial Studies, 34 (7), 3265–3315.

Li, X., Shi, M., & Wang, X. S. (2019). Video mining: Measuring visual information using automatic methods. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 36 (2), 216–231.

Liu, L., Dzyabura, D., & Mizik, N. (2020). Visual listening in: Extracting brand image portrayed on social media. Marketing Science, 39 (4), 669–686.

Luo, J., Kaul, A., & Seo, H. (2018). Winning us with trifles: Adverse selection in the use of philanthropy as insurance. Strategic Management Journal, 39 (10), 2591–2617.

Martin, K. D., Borah, A., & Palmatier, R. W. (2017). Data privacy: Effects on customer and firm performance. Journal of Marketing, 81 (1), 36–58.

Meissner, M., & Oll, J. (2019). The promise of eye-tracking methodology in organizational research: A taxonomy, review, and future avenues. Organizational Research Methods, 22 (2), 590–617.

Mikolov, T., Le, Q. V., & Sutskever, I. (2013). Exploiting similarities among languages for machine translation. arXiv Preprint arXiv . https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1309.4168

Miller, D., Tang, Z., Xu, X., & Le Breton-Miller, I. (2022). Are socially responsible firms associated with socially responsible citizens? A study of social distancing during the covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Business Ethics, 179 , 387–410. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04858-5

Moorman, C. (2020). Commentary: Brand activism in a political world. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 39 (4), 388–392.

Muslu, V., Mutlu, S., Radhakrishnan, S., & Tsang, A. (2019). Corporate social responsibility report narratives and analyst forecast accuracy. Journal of Business Ethics, 154 (4), 1119–1142.

Nalick, M., Josefy, M., Zardkoohi, A., & Bierman, L. (2016). Corporate sociopolitical involvement: A reflection of whose preferences? Academy of Management Perspectives, 30 (4), 384–403.

Noldus. (2014). FaceReader: Tool for automatic analysis of facial expression: Version 6.0 [Software] . Noldus Information Technology B. V.

Noury, A., & Roland, G. (2020). Identity politics and populism in Europe. Annual Review of Political Science, 23 (1), 421–439.

Perez-Batres, L. A., Doh, J. P., Miller, V. V., & Pisani, M. J. (2012). Stakeholder pressures as determinants of CSR strategic choice: Why do firms choose symbolic versus substantive self-regulatory codes of conduct? Journal of Business Ethics, 110 (2), 157–172.

Pew Research Center. (2020). America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide. Retrieved July 1, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/ .

Porter, M. E., & Kramer, M. R. (2011). Creating shared value: Redefining capitalism and the role of the corporation in society. Harvard Business Review, 89 (1/2), 62–77.

Robertson, D. C., Voegtlin, C., & Maak, T. (2017). Business ethics: The promise of neuroscience. Journal of Business Ethics, 144 (4), 679–697.

Business Roundtable. (2019). Business Roundtable redefines the purpose of a corporation to promote ‘an economy that serves all Americans, https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans . Accessed June 28, 2019

Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2016). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach . UK: Pearson Education Limited.

Semadeni, M., Withers, M. C., & Certo, S. T. (2014). The perils of endogeneity and instrumental variables in strategy research: Understanding through simulations. Strategic Management Journal, 35 (7), 1070–1079.

Sen, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2001). Does doing good always lead to doing better? Consumer reactions to corporate social responsibility. Journal of Marketing Research, 38 (2), 225–243.

Sen, S., Du, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2016). Corporate social responsibility: A consumer psychology perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10 , 70–75.

Servaes, H., & Tamayo, A. (2013). The impact of corporate social responsibility on firm value: The role of customer awareness. Management Science, 59 (5), 1045–1061.

Shaw, J. D. (2017). Advantages of starting with theory. Academy of Management Journal, 60 (3), 819–822.

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22 (11), 1359–1366.

Smith, N. C., & Korschun, D. (2018). Finding the middle ground in a politically polarized world. MIT Sloan Management Review, 60 (1), 1–5.

Spohr, D. (2017). Fake news and ideological polarization: Filter bubbles and selective exposure on social media. Business Information Review, 34 (3), 150–160.

Stanley, V. (2020). Commentary: Patagonia and the business of activism. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 39 (4), 393–395.

Stilgoe, J., Owen, R., & Macnaghten, P. (2013). Developing a framework of responsible innovation. Research Policy, 42 (9), 1568–1580.

Timoshenko, A., & Hauser, J. R. (2019). Identifying customer needs from user-generated content. Marketing Science, 38 (1), 1–20.

Valentine, S., & Fleischman, G. (2008). Ethics programs, perceived corporate social responsibility and job satisfaction. Journal of Business Ethics, 77 (2), 159–172.

Van de Ven, A. H. (2007). Engaged scholarship: Creating knowledge for science and practice . Oxford University Press.

Van Maanen, J., Sørensen, J. B., & Mitchell, T. R. (2007). The interplay between theory and method. Academy of Management Review, 32 (4), 1145–1154.

Varadarajan, R. (2017). Innovating for sustainability: A framework for sustainable innovations and a model of sustainable innovations orientation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45 (1), 14–36.

Wang, H., Gibson, C., & Zander, U. (2020). Editors’ comments: Is research on corporate social responsibility undertheorized? Academy of Management Review, 45 (1), 1–6.

Wang, H., Jia, M., & Zhang, Z. (2021a). Good deeds done in silence: Stakeholder management and quiet giving by chinese firms. Organization Science, 32 (3), 649–674.

Wang, X., Lu, S., Li, X. I., Khamitov, M., & Bendle, N. (2021b). Audio mining: The role of vocal tone in persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research, 48 (2), 189–211.

Wickert, C. (2021). Corporate social responsibility research in the journal of management studies: A shift from a business-centric to a society-centric focus. Journal of Management Studies, 58 (8), E1–E17.

Wikipedia (2022). Unstructured Data. Available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_data .

Willness, C. R. (2019). When CSR backfires: Understanding stakeholders’ negative responses to corporate social responsibility. In A. McWilliams, D. E. Rupp, D. S. Siegel, G. K. Stahl, & D. A. Waldman (Eds.), The oxford handbook of corporate social responsibility: Psychological and organizational perspectives (pp. 206–238). Oxford University Press.

Wolfolds, S. E., & Siegel, J. (2019). Misaccounting for endogeneity: The peril of relying on the Heckman two-step method without a valid instrument. Strategic Management Journal, 40 (3), 432–462.

Wood, D. J. (2010). Measuring corporate social performance: A review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12 (1), 50–84.

Wooldridge, J. M. (2010). Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data . USA: MIT Press.

Wu, X., Li, Y., & Yu, Y. (2022). CEO inside debt and employee workplace safety. Journal of Business Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-05033-6

Zou, J. and Schiebinger, L. (2018). AI can be sexist and racist — it’s time to make it fair. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05707-8 , Accessed July 2021.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for human future at the new frontier of power . Profile Books Ltd.

Download references

There is no funding for this research

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, 10 Garrison Avenue, Durham, NH, 03824-3593, USA

University of Toulouse Capitole, TSM-R, 2 Rue du Doyen Gabriel Marty, 31042, Toulouse Cedex, France

Assaad El Akremi

School of Management, Northwestern Polytechnical University, No.127 Youyi West Road, Xi’an, 710072, Shaanxi, China

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shuili Du .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest, additional information, publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Editors at the Journal of Business Ethics are recused from all decisions relating to submissions with which there is any identified potential conflict of interest. Submissions to the Journal of Business Ethics from editors of the journal are handled by a senior independent editor at the journal and subject to full double blind peer review processes.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Du, S., El Akremi, A. & Jia, M. Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for Relevance and Rigor in a Quickly Evolving, Turbulent World. J Bus Ethics 187 , 1–15 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05297-6

Download citation

Received : 21 March 2022

Accepted : 13 November 2022

Published : 25 November 2022

Issue Date : September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05297-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Corporate social responsibility
  • Social impact
  • Theory-driven
  • Methodology
  • Quantitative
  • Find a journal
  • Publish with us
  • Track your research

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The impact of corporate social responsibility on sustainable innovation: a case in china’s heavy pollution industry.

Rui Yan,

  • 1 School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
  • 2 The Institute of Low Carbon Operations Strategy for Beijing Enterprises, Beijing, China

Exploring the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment and disclosure on enterprises’ sustainable innovation capacity can not only expand the research boundary of factors of sustainable innovation and the impact of CSR, but it can also serve as a reference for the decision-making of listed companies in increasing pollution problems. Using a sample of 224 Chinese A-share businesses in the heavy pollution industry listed between 2016 and 2020 and employing an ordinary least square regression, the results provide empirical evidence that CSR is positively associated with sustainable innovation. Second, the business environment can serve as a moderator of the relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation, and the positive relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation is more pronounced in regions with better macroeconomic conditions. Additionally, the improvement of CSR for sustainable innovation is more clear in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned enterprises. After a series of robustness tests that eliminate marketization, law enforcement, and macro-political unpredictability, the results still hold. This study broadens the scope of CSR and sustainable innovation research. In addition, the theoretical and practical significance of this study’s findings is referenced in this paper.

Introduction

Environmental and climate concerns caused by the intensification of global industrialization are irreversible. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a successful approach that encourages businesses to take on additional duties to support social and sustainable development, given the growing consensus in modern global business on the value of sustainable development ( Bauman and Skitka, 2012 ). Innovation is one of the primary drivers of boosting sustainability development ( Silvestre and Neto, 2014 ) and positively impact green performance ( Sharma et al., 2021 ). Scholars pay close attention to the expanding literature on CSR and sustainable innovation ( Shakeel et al., 2020 ).

Economy ( Al-Hadi et al., 2019 ), legislation ( Lau et al., 2018 ), morality ( Mikulka et al., 2020 ), society, and the environment should be firms’ primary responsibilities ( Amor-Esteban et al., 2019 ). It highlights that CSR is not only to fully consider stakeholders and execute the comprehensive social contract but also to increase economic performance ( Cho et al., 2019 ) while assuming environmental obligations. In recent years, there have been many forms of studies on CSR’s influence and influence elements. National culture and corporate governance ( Garcia-Sanchez et al., 2016 ; Mohamed Adnan et al., 2018 ), social media ( Grygiel and Brown, 2019 ), ethics ( Galvão et al., 2019 ; Smith et al., 2021 ), corporate reputation, and customer satisfaction ( Li et al., 2019 ; Yu and Liang, 2020 ; Bogdan et al., 2021 ), corporate integrity culture ( Wan et al., 2020 ; Khan et al., 2022 ). Sustainability strategy, performance, stakeholders, developing nations, climate change, and supply chain management are the research keywords for CSR ( Ye et al., 2020 ). An innovative and sustainable organization respects the environment’s capacity to support and protect its ecosystem’s resources while pursuing economic efficiency ( Severo et al., 2017 ). The research model incorporated CSR as the direction of future development, and sustainable innovation aimed at the environment can boost the economic and environmental performance of businesses ( Ahmad et al., 2021 ).

As a fundamental aspect of sustainable development, the importance of sustainable innovation is self-evident ( Silvestre and Ţîrcă, 2019 ). Prior research shows the connection between people, businesses, and creativity. Environmental sustainability has actively supported the innovation of sustainable business practices ( Shahzad et al., 2020 ). Higher enterprise innovation success is associated with greater CSR ( Wu et al., 2018 ). In recent years, however, there have been few studies on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. Based on social capital and stakeholder theories, CSR impacts innovation performance in an inverted U-shape. The direction of CSR’s influence on innovation may vary among industries ( Liu et al., 2021 ). The association between sustainable innovation and CSR, therefore, requires additional study. Additionally, from an industry perspective, businesses in different industries require different fundamental resources for innovation; therefore, CSR data must be distinguished according to the industry in the study. Existing literature focuses mostly on the fashion sector ( Arrigo, 2013 ), the semiconductor business ( Lu et al., 2013 ), the banking industry ( Istianingsih et al., 2020 ), and the energy industry ( Arrigo, 2013 ; Lu et al., 2013 , 2019 ; Istianingsih et al., 2020 ).

It is common knowledge that significantly polluting companies have a far greater detrimental influence on the ecological environment than others do ( Xie et al., 2022 ). Because of China’s large consumption of traditional fossil fuels, the country’s environmental quality has worsened significantly, attracting the international community’s utmost concern ( Dong et al., 2021 ). China is the largest manufacturing nation in the world. According to the China Statistical Yearbook 2021, 68% of total energy consumption is attributable to enterprises with elevated levels of pollution. To advance the aims of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutral,” more studies must be undertaken on industries with elevated levels of pollution. Since the reform and opening of China 40 years ago, China’s industry has boomed. The prior development, however, was overly reliant on energy and resource input and production scale expansion. China’s industrial expansion followed a broad pattern of growth, inflicting serious environmental and ecosystem harm ( Zhang J. et al., 2017 ). Traditional industries with high energy consumption, high emissions, and high pollutants will have a considerable influence on the environment. Innovation is one of the driving forces for China’s sustainable industrial development ( Yuan and Zhang, 2020 ). In recent years, China’s environmental rules and regulations have been increasingly stringent, and the sustainable development of China’s heavy pollution sectors has steadily become dependent on green development that considers innovation and environmental considerations. However, Fang et al. (2019) discovered in their research that heavy pollution sectors face the conundrum of “effective but not environmentally friendly innovation.” Consequently, it is vital to investigate further the performance of China’s heavy polluting sectors in terms of sustainable development.

This article picks Chinese A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2020 as its research object and empirically examines the impact of CSR on enterprises’ sustainable innovation capacity. The findings show that the output of green innovation considerably enhances business sustainability. Given the sustainable development of businesses, the following questions are posed in this study. How can CSR foster innovation and sustainability? Does the influence of CSR on the capacity for sustainable innovation vary by corporate environment? What is the state of CSR in the Chinese heavy polluting industry?

The following are the primary contributions of this work. First, it expands the literature on sustainable innovation and CSR, which contributes to the development of a fresh perspective for the study of the factors influencing the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses. Existing studies have investigated more CSR-influencing aspects, however, there remains a dearth of studies on CSR’s role. As opposed to undertaking a standard analysis at the firm or national level, this study focuses on publicly traded enterprises in China’s heavy pollution industry. This study can therefore serve as a substantial contribution to the research on the sustainable development of the heavy pollution sector and give theoretical support for the heavy pollution industry to realize its low-carbon transformation goals. Third, most previous research has ignored the societal dimensions of CSR in general ( Chen and Wan, 2020 ). In this study, the business environment is included as a moderating variable in the research model to investigate the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. The data passed the test for robustness. Thus, our findings may be useful to policymakers by identifying social normative force and illuminating how it drives businesses. Given that CSR has a significant impact on the interests of stakeholders, this study can also assist stakeholders in making more informed judgments about the sustainable innovation of businesses.

The organization of this investigation is as follows: The literature review and research hypotheses are provided in Section “Literature Reviews and Research Hypotheses”. The third section of this study describes the research design, including the variables, sample, and model selection. The section “Robustness Tests” consists of empirical analysis, findings reporting, and comments. Section “Conclusions and Policy Recommendations” highlights the theoretical and practical implications’ conclusions and policy recommendations.

Literature Reviews and Research Hypotheses

Sustainable innovation and csr.

According to the stakeholder theory, (CSR) entails that the development of businesses should include stakeholders, including employees, consumers, suppliers, and communities ( Turker, 2009 ). By adhering to principles of CSR, businesses can foster confidence and excellent connections with internal and external stakeholders and effectively drive innovation ( Lins et al., 2016 ).

Everything related to CSR can have a favorable effect on shareholder profitability ( Pucheta-Martínez and Gallego-Álvarez, 2021 ). CSR provides shareholders with economic profits, management and operational knowledge, and motivation to work on CSR. Shareholder-related CSR can increase shareholder confidence in innovative investment opportunities ( Iyer and Soberman, 2016 ). Employee-focused CSR can facilitate employee identification with the organization. When employees acknowledge a firm’s commitment to environmental sustainability, they encourage the organization to regard environmental preservation as a competitive advantage-enhancing opportunity ( Ernst and Jensen Schleiter, 2021 ). Enterprises boost social and environmental performance through pro-environment behavior and stimulate employees’ green behaviors, which has a favorable effect on employees’ innovative technology exploration ( Xu et al., 2022 ). Green human resource management may promote the sustainability of enterprises as an essential technique for influencing the green behavior of employees ( Amjad et al., 2021 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ). Employee green creativity is regarded as the driving force behind company green innovation, and employee green behavior is a crucial metric for measuring employee green creativity ( Jiang et al., 2020 ). Gaudencio et al. (2017) found that CSR increases employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment and has a beneficial effect on the establishment of a stable innovation team ( Ho, 2017 ). CSR receives greater attention the more optimistic the customer’s attitude. Customers like to buy products that perform well in terms of social responsibility ( Iyer and Soberman, 2016 ). Because of client desires, businesses produce added items through technological innovation. In addition, CSR can influence the behavior and selection of suppliers ( Kumar et al., 2014 ; Zhang M. et al., 2017 ; Govindan et al., 2018 ). Companies in a supply chain that apply CSR-related practices can enhance not just their performance, but also that of their supply chain partners ( Yang et al., 2020 ). Businesses may develop societal trust and a positive public image by engaging in CSR. Because of these factors, businesses can foster economic performance and innovative conduct.

Many researchers have conducted studies on sustainable innovation. Sustainable innovation is described as an innovation model with sustainable innovation goals in the creative development process ( Cagliano and Behnam, 2019 ). It exemplifies innovation that is advantageous for environmental quality improvement and social collaboration ( Zhang et al., 2022 ). The enterprises’ green innovation behavior can be considered the performance of sustainable innovation. Important to sustainable development, green innovation promotes innovative technology and concepts ( Liao et al., 2022 ). In addition to ensuring efficient resource usage and effective pollution reduction, the competitive advantage of green innovation rests in achieving optimal economic performance ( Fernando et al., 2019 ). Studies have shown that CSR can assist stakeholders in increasing their profitability and further promote green investment and pro-environment behavior, which is reflected in sustainable innovation’s success. Consequently, we suggest our initial hypothesis:

H1 : The output of CSR can significantly enhance the corporate sustainable innovation performance.

The Moderating Role of the Business Environment

Environment and resources limit the development and operation of heavy pollution industries, which are specialized sectors. In other words, high pollution businesses operate in an environment that is dynamic and constantly changing. Instead of operating in a vacuum, organizations are formed by their surroundings ( Harrison and Pelletier, 1998 ). The environment of an organization is its means of survival. Considered one of the aspects determining the sustainable performance of a corporation is the business environment ( Alqudah et al., 2021 ). The optimization of the business environment can foster technological innovation and enhance the product quality and technological level of businesses. In addition, the optimization of the market environment facilitates firm entry and enhances market rivalry, hence interesting incumbent enterprises to do technological research and development. The development of environmental technologies can foster sustainable innovation in industries with high pollution levels.

Based on the preceding study, the following is the second hypothesis:

H2 : The promotion effect of the output of CSR on sustainable innovation performance is more significant when the business environment is poor.

Materials and Methods

Sample selection and data sources.

This study focuses on the Chinese A-share firms involved in severe pollution industries from 2016 to 2020. Two thousand sixteen is the most recent year for which we have comprehensive data. Given that some data are unavailable at the time of this study, 2020 has been chosen as the conclusion date. The scope of sample selection refers to the CSMAR database and the classification standards of heavily polluting industries in The Guidelines for Environmental Information Disclosure of Listed Companies by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. To assure the validity of the empirical research, the sample is treated as follows. First, to avoid the influence of outliers, firms with anomalous financial status, ST, * ST, suspended listing, and delisting between 2016 and 2020 were omitted from this study. Second, we eliminate samples devoid of CSR and other variable values. Third, to prevent the influence of extreme values, we eliminate the samples from 2016-to 2020 for which the value of sustainable innovation is zero. The CSR statistics are from the social responsibility reports of HeXun Net-listed enterprises. The data on sustainable innovation comes from the National Intellectual Property Patent Database and the Green List of International Patent Classification maintained by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Other data sources include the China Statistical Yearbook, the China Environmental Statistical Yearbook, the annual reports of publicly traded enterprises, and the RESSET database.

Dependent Variable (Sustainable Innovation)

According to the current body of research, there are no accepted criteria for measuring the sustainable innovation of businesses. The patent data of an enterprise directly reflects its technological innovation accomplishments, and the number of patents can be used to gauge an enterprise’s innovation level ( Abraham and Moitra, 2001 ; Albino et al., 2014 ). This study selects patent applications for green inventions and green utility models as indicators of sustainable innovation.

Independent Variable (CSR)

The social responsibility assessment system of HeXun Net comprises fifty subdivision indicators. The entire system is based on shareholder responsibility, employee accountability, supplier, customer, consumer responsibility, environmental responsibility, and social responsibility. The findings represent CSR compliance and transparency.

Moderating Variable (Business Environment)

The business environment is selected as the moderating variable in this study. The concept of conducting business is derived from the World Bank’s Doing Business Report. The World Bank evaluates the business climate from a national and regional standpoint. This study requires more granular indicators for provincial regions. Consequently, this article utilizes the research on the evaluation index system of the business environment ( Yang and Wei, 2021 ) to objectively calculate the business environment index of the city where the firms are located. This index system comprises per capita GDP, average salary level, consumption rate, per capita fixed asset investment, and GDP growth rate as indicators and takes into consideration disparities in economic development level and human capital from the standpoint of the macroeconomic environment.

Control Variables

Drawing on the previous empirical research on CSR ( Ali and Frynas, 2017 ; Su, 2019 ; Chen and Wan, 2020 ; Wan et al., 2020 ), this study also selects control variables as follows: the size of the company (SIZE), price-to-book ratio (PB), profitability (LEV), return on total assets (ROA), years of establishment (AGE), cash flow (CASH), shareholding nature (SOE), managerial shareholding ratio (MSH), board independence (INDEP), and duality (DUAL).

The definitions and interpretations of all variables are shown in Table 1 .

www.frontiersin.org

Table 1 . Variable definitions.

Empirical Models

Based on the previous studies ( Chen and Wan, 2020 ; Chen and Ji, 2022 ; Liao et al., 2022 ; Xie et al., 2022 ), this study establishes Equation 1 and use the OLS regression method to investigate the impact of CSR on the sustainable innovation.

Results and Discussions

Descriptive statistics.

The variables’ descriptive statistics for the entire sample are presented in Table 2 . As shown in the table, the mean and median values are 1.887 and 1.0986, respectively, whereas the 25% levels and maximum CSR are 0.0000 and 8.9200, showing that there are considerable disparities in SI performance among the studied organizations. The mean and median CSR values are 24.7164 and 19.8650, respectively, while the minimum, 25%, 75%, and maximum CSR values are −11.7700, 15.3025, 26.4050, and 85.7700, indicating that the sampled organizations perform poorly on CSR. Both the capacity for sustainable innovation and performing CSR among the samples have a significant space for development. The 25% and 75% thresholds of ENVIR are 0.3833 and 0.5445, respectively, showing that the macroeconomic contexts in which the studied enterprises operate are distinct. The minimum and maximum CASH values are −7.7700 and 17.5900, respectively, indicating that there are significant variances in operational capability among the examined organizations. The mean for independent SOEs is 0.4375, meaning that 43.75% of the studied enterprises are government-owned. Moreover, there are significant variances in many sample parameters, such as SIZE, PB, LEV, ROA, and MSH, necessitating the inclusion of these control variables in this model. Table 2 additionally provides descriptive analysis results for other variables.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 2 . Descriptive statistics.

Correlation Analysis

The Pearson correlation coefficients between the variables are displayed in Table 3 . Consistent with hypothesis H1, the correlation study demonstrates that SI is significantly consistent with CSR at the 1% level, providing early evidence that corporate integrity culture is favorably associated with a firm’s CSR performance.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 3 . Correlation analysis of variables.

In general, if the correlation coefficients between independent variables are less than or equal to 0.80, the model may not have significant multicollinearity issues. All correlation coefficients between independent variables in this model are less than 0.454. There is hence no multicollinearity issue. The findings of the univariate correlation analysis are shown above, and the results of the multivariate regression analysis will be presented below.

Multivariate Regression Results

Table 4 displays the findings of a multivariate regression on the effect of CSR e on sustainable innovation. Although the modified R2 (0.147) is insufficient, the F -value shows that the models as a whole are significant (18.506). Model (1)'s regression output comprises independent variables and control variables. CSR has a significantly positive impact on sustainable innovation (0.016, t  = 7.018), as shown in the table. This positive correlation implies that hypothesis H1 proposed in this paper’s research hypothesis section has been confirmed by the empirical study. The findings suggest that organizations that prioritize CSR fulfillment and disclosure have a greater capability for sustainable innovation. Since the existing research has identified the influencing factors of CSR, we choose several representative corporate management variables as control variables, and the regression results of the control variables in Model (1) are most consistent with expectations. Among the control variables, the SIZE, AGE, CASH, SOE, and INDEP regression coefficients are significantly positive. A greater number of independent directors, a larger asset size, a longer listing period, more asset liquidity, and more stable equity are all correlated with a higher ability for sustainable innovation. Significantly negative regression coefficients for PB can be observed. The lower the price-to-book ratio, the greater the company’s investment value and growth prospects, and hence its emphasis on sustainable innovation. Several research has previously investigated and proven the inherent positive impact of CSR, innovation, and sustainable development ( Silvestre and Ţîrcă, 2019 ; Sharma et al., 2021 ; Chen and Ji, 2022 ; Liao et al., 2022 ). This study’s findings are consistent with past research in this area. In addition, the data confirm the likelihood that CSR in various industries may have varied effects on sustainable innovation at various times ( Liu et al., 2021 ). This may owe to the various key resources utilized by various sectors. In the context of China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality objectives, firms in the heavy pollution industry that place a premium on CSR will prioritize their sustainable development and guide stakeholders to engage in sustainable innovation.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 4 . Regression results of sustainable innovation and CSR.

The H2 hypothesis investigates the effect of the business environment on the relationship between sustainable innovation and CSR. Before assessing the business environment moderating, we standardize the data. Table 4 displays the regression findings for Model (2). We derived varying business climate scores based on the location of the businesses. The business environment has a considerable impact on the interaction between sustainable innovation and CSR. The enhanced R2 of 0.203 indicates that the model has a better fitting effect. This positive correlation demonstrates that the empirical investigation has confirmed the hypothesis H2 proposed in the research hypothesis section of this work. Objectively, the business environment plays a moderating role. On the one hand, when businesses perform well in terms of CSR, a better macroeconomic climate can bring about greater investment possibilities and human capital to encourage the development of sustainable innovation capability. In contrast, when a business is in a location with a more favorable economic climate, market rivalry and government laws will encourage the business to adhere to CSR and prioritize sustainable development. When businesses are in regions with more favorable economic conditions, they are more likely to have easier access to capital, hence bolstering budgets for sustainable innovation. Consequently, the ability for sustainable innovation may increase. In addition, the coefficients and significance of other control variables in this model are consistent with expectations.

Robustness Tests

Controlling the effects of marketization and law enforcement.

In addition, we control for the effects of marketization and law enforcement, both of which may impact the CSR of local firms. For instance, Du et al. (2016) observed that the amount of law enforcement in an area has a considerable impact on the CSR performance of local businesses and that the enforcement of regulations varies greatly throughout Chinese provinces. Based on a prior study ( Wang et al., 2008 ; Chen and Wan, 2020 ), one should additionally evaluate a region’s marketization. We use the regional marketization index and the legal environment index in conjunction with prior research ( Wan et al., 2020 ) to assess the marketization process and regional law enforcement in China ( Fan et al., 2011 ). Table 5 displays the outcomes. We add the control variable MARKET to the regression model in column (1). In column (2), the control variable LAW is incorporated into the regression model. In column (3), both MARKET and LAW are included as control variables in the regression model. The results of the three models are comparable, showing that the influence of CSR on sustainable innovation remains positively significant. Therefore, the localization of the market for law enforcement has no bearing on our argument regarding the relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation. The empirical findings remain valid.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 5 . Controlling for the effects of marketization and law enforcement.

Exclusion of Alternative Explanations

Chen and Ji (2022) discovered that research results may only be confirmed during a period with a negative macro-political environment and fade during other eras. Therefore, it is essential to rule out this other explanation and re-evaluate our samples. In 2017, for instance, the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held. In addition, COVID-19 affected most of China in 2020. Both can be unpredictable macro-political environment elements. As a result, we choose the policy environment index ( Yang and Wei, 2021 ) as a proxy to measure the macro-political environment of a region. To facilitate comparisons, we divide our sample into two groups based on whether macro-political environment uncertainty is high or low and recalculate the regression results. The value of the policy environment index that is below the mean shows macro-political environment uncertainty, whereas a value above the mean indicates political environment uncertainty. The results presented in Table 6 for samples of high and low political uncertainty are consistent with those presented in prior tables. The macro-political environment does not affect our outcomes.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 6 . Exclusion for political uncertainty.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

In recent years, China has established the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, as well as intensified its efforts to change heavy polluting industries to promote energy saving, emission reduction, and sustainable growth. This research investigates the relationship between sustainable innovation and the CSR of China’s big polluters that are publicly traded. Exploring the impact of CSR on the sustainable innovation capacity of enterprises can not only broaden the scope of research on the impact mechanism of sustainable enterprises’ development capacity and the effect consequences of CSR but also serve as a guide for the decision-making of publicly traded companies in the heavy pollution industry. Based on the data of China’s A-share heavy pollution listed companies from 2016 to 2020, we evaluated the effect of CSR fulfillment and disclosure on green patent applications. Through a series of robustness tests, the results are unaffected by marketization, law enforcement, and macro-political unpredictability.

The outcomes reveal: (1) CSR significantly improves the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses and (2) when a business is in a region with a more favorable macroeconomic environment, the effect of CSR on sustainable innovation capacity is more pronounced. Additionally, the improvement of CSR for sustainable innovation is more clear in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned enterprises. CSR has a more favorable effect on sustainable innovation when the board is more independent. These results also indicate that the government and independent directors can serve as a check, a balance, and a supervisor to encourage stakeholders to prioritize CSR and promote sustainable innovation capacity from the sidelines, particularly in China’s heavy pollution industry.

Policy Recommendations

This study’s findings have the following implications for businesses, their managers, and legislators. In the first place, our empirical findings demonstrate that CSR greatly improves sustainable innovation potential. Therefore, corporate managers must acknowledge the significance of CSR. They should place a greater emphasis on the outcomes of sustainable innovation and realize the sustainable development of businesses through sustainable innovation. Due to the stimulation of macroeconomic environmental conditions, firms in the heavy polluting industry will pay greater attention to the fulfillment and disclosure of CSR and support the strengthening of their capacity for sustainable innovation. Currently, heavy polluting industries, particularly manufacturing, are shifting from China’s economically developed eastern areas to the economically depressed center and western regions. If the government does not prioritize local economic growth, it may negatively affect the local ecology. Moreover, by addressing internal governance characteristics, businesses can mitigate the detrimental impact of the regional transfer on sustainable innovation. Thirdly, green human resource management methods can improve the environmental performance and sustainability of businesses ( Roscoe et al., 2019 ; Bazrkar and Moshiripour, 2021 ). Incorporating sustainability measures into the human resource management system ( Sabokro et al., 2021 ) and recognizing the role of human resource management for the achievement of long-term sustainability in industrial development are therefore options for heavy pollution industries. In conclusion, businesses should integrate green and sustainable practices into their overall development plan.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study has limitations that necessitate more investigation. Due to the availability of data, this report only includes information from 2016 to 2020. Due to China’s ongoing efforts in energy saving and emission reduction during the past few years, results may vary over time. In addition, this article examined the impact of CSR on sustainable innovation from the standpoint of CSR. In future, we can also examine the effects of the many components of CSR. Lastly, the proportion of highly educated employees and research and development professionals might be viewed as elements that influence the sustainable innovation capacity of businesses.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author Contributions

XL: investigation, data curation, modeling and experiment. RY: methodology, supervision, and writing. XZ: review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 71802021, no. 71602008), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (no. 9184023), Beijing Municipal Education Commission Foundation (BJSJ2020001, BJSJ2019001, BJSJ2018009), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. FRF-BD-20-15A, no. FRF-BR-20-01C) and Beijing Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (no. 21JCC089).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Abraham, B. P., and Moitra, S. D. (2001). Innovation assessment through patent analysis. Technovation 21, 245–252. doi: 10.1016/S0166-4972(00)00040-7

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Ahmad, N., Scholz, M., AlDhaen, E., Ullah, Z., and Scholz, P. (2021). Improving Firm’s economic and environmental performance Through the sustainable and innovative environment: evidence from an emerging economy. Front. Psychol. 12:651394. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651394

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Albino, V., Ardito, L., Dangelico, R. M., and Messeni Petruzzelli, A. (2014). Understanding the development trends of low-carbon energy technologies: A patent analysis. Appl. Energy 135, 836–854. doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.08.012

Al-Hadi, A., Chatterjee, B., Yaftian, A., Taylor, G., and Monzur Hasan, M. (2019). Corporate social responsibility performance, financial distress and firm life cycle: evidence from Australia. Account. Finance 59, 961–989. doi: 10.1111/acfi.12277

Ali, W., and Frynas, J. G. (2017). The role of normative CSR-promoting institutions in stimulating CSR disclosures in developing countries. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 25, 373–390. doi: 10.1002/csr.1466

Alqudah, H. E., Poshdar, M., Oyewobi, L., Rotimi, J. O. B., and Tookey, J. (2021). Business environment, CRM, and sustainable performance of construction industry in New Zealand: a linear regression model. Sustain. For. 13:13121. doi: 10.3390/su132313121

Amjad, F., Abbas, W., Zia-Ur-Rehman, M., Baig, S. A., Hashim, M., Khan, A., et al. (2021). Effect of green human resource management practices on organizational sustainability: the mediating role of environmental and employee performance. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 28, 28191–28206. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-11307-9

Amor-Esteban, V., Galindo-Villardón, M.-P., García-Sánchez, I.-M., and David, F. (2019). An extension of the industrial corporate social responsibility practices index: new information for stakeholder engagement under a multivariate approach. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 26, 127–140. doi: 10.1002/csr.1665

Arrigo, E. (2013). Corporate responsibility management in fast fashion companies: the gap Inc. case. J. Fash. Mark. Manag. 17, 175–189. doi: 10.1108/JFMM-10-2011-0074

Bauman, C. W., and Skitka, L. J. (2012). Corporate social responsibility as a source of employee satisfaction. Res. Organ. Behav. 32, 63–86. doi: 10.1016/j.riob.2012.11.002

Bazrkar, A., and Moshiripour, A. (2021). Corporate practices of green human resources management. Foresight STI Gov. 15, 97–105. doi: 10.17323/2500-2597.2021.1.97.105

Bogdan, M., Cristina, B., and Simona, G. (2021). The relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in Romanian companies. Econ. Comput. Econ. Cybern. Stud. 55, 297–314. doi: 10.24818/18423264/55.3.21.19

Cagliano, R., and Behnam, S. (2019). Are innovation resources and capabilities enough to make businesses sustainable? An empirical study of leading sustainable innovative firms. Int. J. Technol. Manag. 79, 1–20. doi: 10.1504/IJTM.2019.10016975

Chen, S., and Ji, Y. (2022). Do corporate social responsibility categories distinctly influence innovation? A Resource-Based Theory Perspective. Sustainability 14:3154. doi: 10.3390/su14063154

Chen, X., and Wan, P. (2020). Social trust and corporate social responsibility: evidence from China. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 27, 485–500. doi: 10.1002/csr.1814

Cho, S., Chung, C., and Young, J. (2019). Study on the relationship between CSR and financial performance. Sustain. For. 11:343. doi: 10.3390/su11020343

Dong, F., Zhang, Y., Zhang, X., Hu, M., Gao, Y., and Zhu, J. (2021). Exploring ecological civilization performance and its determinants in emerging industrialized countries: A new evaluation system in the case of China. J. Clean. Prod. 315:128051. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128051

Du, X., Du, Y., Zeng, Q., Pei, H., and Chang, Y. (2016). Religious atmosphere, law enforcement, and corporate social responsibility: evidence from China. Asia Pac. J. Manag. 33, 229–265. doi: 10.1007/s10490-015-9441-0

Ernst, J., and Jensen Schleiter, A. (2021). Organizational identity struggles and reconstruction During organizational change: narratives as symbolic, emotional and practical glue. Organ. Stud. 42, 891–910. doi: 10.1177/0170840619854484

Fan, G., Wang, X. L., and Zhu, H. P., (2011). NERI Index of Marketization of China’s Provinces 2011 Report. Beijing: Economic Science Press.

Google Scholar

Fang, Z., Bai, H., and Bilan, Y. (2019). Evaluation research of green innovation efficiency in China’s heavy polluting industries. Sustain. For. 12:146. doi: 10.3390/su12010146

Fernando, Y., Chiappetta Jabbour, C. J., and Wah, W.-X. (2019). Pursuing green growth in technology firms through the connections between environmental innovation and sustainable business performance: does service capability matter? Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 141, 8–20. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.09.031

Galvão, A., Mendes, L., Marques, C., and Mascarenhas, C. (2019). Factors influencing students’ corporate social responsibility orientation in higher education. J. Clean. Prod. 215, 290–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.059

Garcia-Sanchez, I.-M., Cuadrado-Ballesteros, B., and Frias-Aceituno, J.-V. (2016). Impact of the institutional macro context on the voluntary disclosure of CSR information. Long-Range Plan. 49, 15–35. doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2015.02.004

Gaudencio, P., Coelho, A., and Ribeiro, N. (2017). The role of trust in corporate social responsibility and worker relationships. J. Manag. Dev. 36, 478–492. doi: 10.1108/JMD-02-2016-0026

Govindan, K., Shankar, M., and Kannan, D. (2018). Supplier selection is based on corporate social responsibility practices. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 200, 353–379. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.09.003

Grygiel, J., and Brown, N. (2019). Are social media companies motivated to be good corporate citizens? Examination of the connection between corporate social responsibility and social media safety. Telecommun. Policy 43, 445–460. doi: 10.1016/j.telpol.2018.12.003

Harrison, E. F., and Pelletier, M. A. (1998). Foundations of strategic decision effectiveness. Manag. Decis. 36, 147–159. doi: 10.1108/00251749810208931

Ho, C.-W. (2017). Does practicing CSR makes consumers Like your shop more? Consumer-retailer love mediates CSR and behavioral intentions. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 14:1558. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14121558

Istianingsih, T., Trireksani, T., and Manurung, D. T. H. (2020). The impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on the future earnings response coefficient (ASEAN banking analysis). Sustain. For. 12:9671. doi: 10.3390/su12229671

Iyer, G., and Soberman, D. A. (2016). Social responsibility and product innovation. Mark. Sci. 35, 727–742. doi: 10.1287/mksc.2015.0975

Jiang, H., Wang, K., Lu, Z., Liu, Y., Wang, Y., and Li, G. (2020). Measuring green creativity for employees in green enterprises: scale development and validation. Sustain. For. 13:275. doi: 10.3390/su13010275

Khan, F. U., Trifan, V. A., Pantea, M. F., Zhang, J., and Nouman, M. (2022). Internal governance and corporate social responsibility: evidence from Chinese companies. Sustain. For. 14:2261. doi: 10.3390/su14042261

Kumar, D. T., Palaniappan, M., Kannan, D., and Shankar, K. M. (2014). Analyzing the CSR issues behind the supplier selection process using ISM approach. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 92, 268–278. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.02.005

Lau, A., Lee, S., and Jung, S. (2018). The role of the institutional environment in the relationship between CSR and operational performance: an empirical study in Korean manufacturing industries. Sustain. For. 10:834. doi: 10.3390/su10030834

Li, F., Morris, T., and Young, B. (2019). The effect of corporate visibility on corporate social responsibility. Sustain. For. 11:3698. doi: 10.3390/su11133698

Liao, Y., Qiu, X., Wu, A., Sun, Q., Shen, H., and Li, P. (2022). Assessing the impact of green innovation on corporate sustainable development. Front. Energy Res. 9:800848. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.800848

Lins, K. V., Servaes, H., and Tamayo, A. M. (2016). Social capital, trust, and firm performance: The value of corporate social responsibility during the financial crisis. J. Financ. 72, 1785–1824. doi: 10.1111/jofi.12505

Liu, Y., Chen, Y., Ren, Y., and Jin, B. (2021). Impact mechanism of corporate social responsibility on sustainable technological innovation performance from the perspective of corporate social capital. J. Clean. Prod. 308:127345. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127345

Lu, J., Ren, L., Qiao, J., Yao, S., Strielkowski, W., and Streimikis, J. (2019). Corporate social responsibility and corruption: implications for the sustainable energy sector. Sustain. For. 11:4128. doi: 10.3390/su11154128

Lu, W.-M., Wang, W.-K., and Lee, H.-L. (2013). The relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate performance: evidence from the US semiconductor industry. Int. J. Prod. Res. 51, 5683–5695. doi: 10.1080/00207543.2013.776186

Mikulka, Z., Nekvapilová, I., and Fedorková, J. (2020). The moral-value orientation—a prerequisite for sustainable development of the corporate social responsibility of a security organization. Sustain. For. 12:5718. doi: 10.3390/su12145718

Mohamed Adnan, S., Hay, D., and van Staden, C. J. (2018). The influence of culture and corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure: A cross country analysis. J. Clean. Prod. 198, 820–832. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.057

Pucheta-Martínez, M. C., and Gallego-Álvarez, I. (2021). The role of CEO power on CSR reporting: The moderating effect of linking CEO compensation to shareholder return. Sustain. For. 13:3197. doi: 10.3390/su13063197

Roscoe, S., Subramanian, N., Jabbour, C. J. C., and Chong, T. (2019). Green human resource management and the enablers of green organisational culture: enhancing a firm’s environmental performance for sustainable development. Bus. Strateg. Environ. 28, 737–749. doi: 10.1002/bse.2277

Sabokro, M., Masud, M. M., and Kayedian, A. (2021). The effect of green human resources management on corporate social responsibility, green psychological climate and employees’ green behavior. J. Clean. Prod. 313:127963. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127963

Severo, E. A., Guimarães, J. C. F. D., and Dorion, E. C. H. (2017). Cleaner production and environmental management as sustainable product innovation antecedents: A survey in Brazilian industries. J. Clean Prod. 142, 87–97. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.090

Shahzad, M., Qu, Y., Javed, S. A., Zafar, A. U., and Rehman, S. U. (2020). Relation of environment sustainability to CSR and green innovation: A case of Pakistani manufacturing industry. J. Clean Prod. 253:119938. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119938

Shakeel, J., Mardani, A., Chofreh, A. G., Goni, F. A., and Klemeš, J. J. (2020). Anatomy of sustainable business model innovation. J. Clean Prod. 261:121201. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121201

Sharma, S., Prakash, G., Kumar, A., Mussada, E. K., Antony, J., and Luthra, S. (2021). Analysing the relationship of adaption of green culture, innovation, green performance for achieving sustainability: mediating role of employee commitment. J. Clean Prod. 303:127039. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127039

Silvestre, B. S., and Neto, R. E. S. (2014). Capability accumulation, innovation, and technology diffusion: lessons from a base of the pyramid cluster. Technovation 34, 270–283. doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2013.09.007

Silvestre, B. S., and Ţîrcă, D. M. (2019). Innovations for sustainable development: moving toward a sustainable future. J. Clean Prod. 208, 325–332. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.244

Smith, N. M., Zhu, Q., Smith, J. M., and Mitcham, C. (2021). Enhancing engineering ethics: role ethics and corporate social responsibility. Sci. Eng. Ethics 27, 28–21. doi: 10.1007/s11948-021-00289-7

Su, K. (2019). Does religion benefit corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Evidence from China. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 26, 1206–1221. doi: 10.1002/csr.1742

Turker, D. (2009). How corporate social responsibility influences organizational commitment. J. Bus. Ethics 89, 189–204. doi: 10.1007/s10551-008-9993-8

Wan, P., Chen, X., and Ke, Y. (2020). Does corporate integrity culture matter to corporate social responsibility? Evidence from China. J. Clean Prod. 259:120877. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120877

Wang, Q., Wong, T. J., and Xia, L. (2008). State ownership, the institutional environment, and auditor choice: evidence from China. J. Account. Econ. 46, 112–134. doi: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2008.04.001

Wu, W., Liu, Y., Chan, T., and Zhu, W. (2018). Will green CSR enhance innovation? A perspective of public visibility and firm transparency. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 15:268. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15020268

Xie, Z., Wang, J., and Zhao, G. (2022). Impact of green innovation on firm value: evidence from listed companies in China’s heavy pollution industries. Front. Energy Res. 9:806926. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.806926

Xu, B., Gao, X., Cai, W., and Jiang, L. (2022). How environmental leadership boosts Employees’ green innovation behavior? A Moderated Mediation Model. Front. Psychol. 12:689671. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689671

Yang, Y., Lau, A. K. W., Lee, P. K. C., and Cheng, T. C. E. (2020). The performance implication of corporate social responsibility in matched Chinese small and medium-sized buyers and suppliers. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 230:107796. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107796

Yang, R., and Wei, Q. (2021). The impact of business environment on urban innovation capability: An empirical test based on mediating effect. W. Surv. Res. 10, 35–43. doi: 10.13778/j.cnki.11-3705/c.2021.10.005

Ye, N., Kueh, T.-B., Hou, L., Liu, Y., and Yu, H. (2020). A bibliometric analysis of corporate social responsibility in sustainable development. J. Clean. Prod. 272:122679. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122679

Yu, S.-H., and Liang, W.-C. (2020). Exploring the determinants of strategic corporate social responsibility: an empirical examination. Sustain. For. 12:2368. doi: 10.3390/su12062368

Yuan, B., and Zhang, Y. (2020). Flexible environmental policy, technological innovation and sustainable development of China’s industry: The moderating effect of environment regulatory enforcement. J. Clean. Prod. 243:118543. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118543

Zhang, Z., Li, L., and Zhang, H. (2022). A sustainable innovation strategy oriented toward complex product Servitization. Sustain. For. 14:4290. doi: 10.3390/su14074290

Zhang, J., Liu, Y., Chang, Y., and Zhang, L. (2017). Industrial eco-efficiency in China: A provincial quantification using three-stage data envelopment analysis. J. Clean. Prod. 143, 238–249. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.123

Zhang, M., Pawar, K. S., and Bhardwaj, S. (2017). Improving supply chain social responsibility through supplier development. Prod. Plan. Control 28, 500–511. doi: 10.1080/09537287.2017.1309717

Zhu, S., Wu, Y., and Shen, Q. (2021). How environmental knowledge and green values affect the relationship between green human resource management and Employees’ green behavior: From the perspective of emission reduction. PRO 10:38. doi: 10.3390/pr10010038

Keywords: sustainable innovation, corporate social responsibility, heavy pollution industry, business environment, sustainable development

Citation: Yan R, Li X and Zhu X (2022) The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Sustainable Innovation: A Case in China’s Heavy Pollution Industry. Front. Psychol . 13:946570. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.946570

Received: 17 May 2022; Accepted: 09 June 2022; Published: 04 July 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Yan, Li and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Xiaoning Zhu, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

IMAGES

  1. (PDF) The Sustainable Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility: A

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

  2. (PDF) Special Issue on Corporate Social Responsibility and

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

  3. Corporate Social Responsibility

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

  4. Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

  5. Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability (CSR) Essay Example

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

  6. (PDF) Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility in the Text of

    research paper on corporate social responsibility and sustainability

VIDEO

  1. Corporate Purpose, (Social) Equity, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

  2. Is Corporate Social Responsibility Becoming Obsolete?

COMMENTS

  1. Corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability

    Corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability: achieving firms sustainable performance supported by plant capability Huayi Li a Business School, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, P. R. China View further author information ,

  2. Corporate social responsibility research: the importance of context

    Research that considers both CSR activity and CSR reporting has traditionally focused on companies in more developed economies, predominantly the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand (Burritt and Schaltegger 2010; Frost et al. 2005; Gray 2006; Gurvitsh and Sidorova 2012; Othman and Ameer 2009; Patten 2002; Sahay 2004 ), but recently there has been ...

  3. (PDF) Corporate sustainability and social responsibility

    Our paper focuses on the links between corporate sustainability and social responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) emerged as a tool for linking the priorities of...

  4. The impact of corporate social responsibility on the sustainable

    This research examines the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions (employee, customer, community, and environment) on the sustainable business performance of the manufacturing industry. Manifestly, the mediating impact of firm reputation is also analyzed between CSR and sustainable business performance.

  5. The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Sustainable Innovation

    Introduction. Environmental and climate concerns caused by the intensification of global industrialization are irreversible. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a successful approach that encourages businesses to take on additional duties to support social and sustainable development, given the growing consensus in modern global business on the value of sustainable development (Bauman and ...

  6. Corporate Social Responsibility Research in the

    This introduction to the Thematic Collection on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tracks the evolution of CSR research published in the Journal of Management Studies from 2006 until 2021. Alongside the mainstreaming of CSR within management studies, CSR research in JMS has progressed from a business-centric to a society-centric focus.

  7. Corporate sustainability and responsibility: creating value for

    This review paper puts forward a conceptual framework for corporate sustainability and responsibility. It suggests that responsible business practices create economic and societal value by re-aligning their corporate objectives with stakeholder management and environmental responsibility. Background

  8. A systematic literature review on corporate sustainability

    This paper aims to understand the current research scenario through published studies on corporate sustainability, emphasizing the environmental approach. Methodologically, this research develops a systematic literature review based on papers published in the Web of Science database in the last ten years.

  9. PDF Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. A Bibliometric

    Keywords: sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); Social Sustainability; Economic Sustainability; Environmental Sustainability; bibliometric 1. Introduction The concepts of Sustainability and sustainable development have acquired greater importance over time, as society as a whole has become more aware of its impact on the

  10. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability

    A study of the interrelationships between the principles of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) would be advantageous, given the prevalence of unequal opportunities and access to resources in a global economy (CSR). To address global and diverse challenges, fieldwork and their relationships must be examined.

  11. PDF Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: From a Corporate

    Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development. Based on stakeholder theory, CSR is a multidimensional measurement concept [21,22]. From a new institutional economics perspective, CSR is the monitoring and constraint of profit-seeking behavior by stakeholders in a market economy situation.

  12. Measuring corporate social responsibility: an evaluation of a new

    The purpose of this study is to explore, develop, and evaluate a new sustainable development goals (SDG) index that quantifies corporate social responsibility (CSR). By providing a granular perspective with clear justification for methods, this index is more applicable to academic research in comparison with the CSR indices published by private ...

  13. Full article: Integrating corporate sustainability and sustainable

    The SDGs are well connected with the three pillars of corporate sustainability. This research paper has two unique properties: first, it uses a stakeholder approach to establish the organic linkages between the triple bottom line (TBL) approach and SDGs. ... Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 26, 1184-1205.

  14. Sustainability

    The results showed that: (a) The MK trend test shows that the amount of CSR and innovation research is increasing. The top three journals in terms of productivity are Sustainability, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.

  15. Corporate social responsibility reports: A review of the evolution

    1. Introduction. Since its beginnings in the mid-twentieth century, where the first definitions were centered on the business-society binomial, the concept of corporate social responsibility (hereinafter, CSR) [[1], [2], [3]] has evolved and incorporated different elements, such as the principle of voluntariness, the interested parties of the theory of stakeholders [4] or the four ...

  16. Sustainability

    An organisation should be concerned with more than just profit; it should also be concerned with the social interests and welfare of the surrounding community. In order to ensure that the welfare of society is always safeguarded, the government places a greater emphasis on corporate social responsibility within the business sector. Good corporate social responsibility is only possible in ...

  17. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Implementation: A Review and a

    Article Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Implementation: A Review and a Research Agenda Towards an Integrative Framework Review Paper Published: 02 February 2022 Volume 183 , pages 105-121, ( 2023 ) Cite this article Download PDF Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript Tahniyath Fatima & Said Elbanna 71k Accesses

  18. (PDF) Sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR

    The purpose of this paper is to examine different aspects and approaches regarding sustainability, sustainable development, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the context of...

  19. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility

    International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 2024 9 :1 Original Article Published on: 26 January 2024 Full Text PDF Synthesising synergies between CSR and BHR for corporate accountability: an integrated approach

  20. Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for

    Introduction Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has flourished over the last few decades, providing significant insights into whether and how corporations should enact their societal obligations and stakeholder responsibilities.

  21. Corporate social responsibility: Current state and future opportunities

    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains a critical topic for the forestry sector due to increasing societal expectations about the sustainable use of forests. This paper presents an updated review of the history, current state, and future opportunities for CSR in the forest sector.

  22. How environmental, social, and governance implementation and structure

    Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management : a journal focused on the social & environmental accountability of business in the context of sustainability. Abstract This study investigates how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy and implementation, along with governance structure, influence sustainable ...

  23. Frontiers

    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a successful approach that encourages businesses to take on additional duties to support social and sustainable development, given the growing consensus in modern global business on the value of sustainable development ( Bauman and Skitka, 2012 ).

  24. The relationship between Sustainable Development and Corporate Social

    In recent years, the discussion about sustainability has risen above average and a huge amount of different terms have been established. This leads to a very broad and unspecified discussion about this topic, especially in economic science and business management. The aim of this paper is to find out - due to an extended literature study - where the focus in the discussion of Sustainable ...

  25. Exploring the relationship between corporate social responsibility and

    2.1. Corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility as a new phenomenon in business activities started in about 1950s (Campbell, Citation 2007; Carroll, Citation 2008; Krisnawati et al., Citation 2014; Riera, Iborra, Citation 2017).The main global CSR initiative Global Compact was presented by the UN in 1999, integrating ten universal principles that include the areas of ...

  26. Putting People First: How Corporate Leaders Can Champion Social

    Putting people first is key to sustainability. getty. Traditional business wisdom once confined success to profit alone. However, there has been a significant shift, from the era of corporate ...

  27. The effect of environmental, social, and governance disclosure and real

    In the near future, this will apply not only to large companies but also to small ones. Thus, the European Commission has proposed a set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) under the Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (CSRD) legislation. Companies have to apply in 2024 and publish a sustainability report in 2025.

  28. Coca-Cola's Sustainability Chief on Building a Circular Economy and

    Coca‑Cola sells around 2.2 billion drinks servings daily across more than 200 brands. In 2022 it had a carbon footprint of 65 million metric tons, 88% of which was in its value chain. The ...

  29. The impact of corporate social responsibility: corporate activities

    The impact of corporate social responsibility: corporate activities, the environment and society edited by Robert Kudłak, Ralf Barkemeyer, Lutz Preuss, and Anna Heikkinen, Abingdon, Routledge, 2023, xv+205 pp., £115.71 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-032-02188-1.