TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to attempt to develop a framework that will help managers to design firm level corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives which can be of strategic interest for an organisation.Design/methodology/approach– The paper reviews concepts from the domains of strategic management and CSR literature. The concepts are deliberated and analyzed to build up a strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework. The article starts by identifying the salient stakeholders of a firm, based on the three stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency. The framework then talks about the identification of a firm's interest in CSR, on the basis of firm value chain, context of competitiveness and intention of creating new business opportunities. Finally, this literature talks about the expected benefits to be achieved by carrying out strategic CSR initiatives.Findings– In a competitive atmosphere, it is important to utilize the firm resources in a proper manner and for a worthy cause. The undertaking of CSR initiatives calls for the sacrifice of firm resources. Resources are scarce and valuable. Managers can design CSR initiatives in a number of ways. But the real challenge for managers is to design firm CSR strategy in such a manner that it helps address a social issue and also provides the organization with some business benefits.Originality/value– Though managers are aware of the need and benefits of undertaking strategic CSR, a comprehensive theoretical framework which can guide CSR managers to design and implement CSR activities for strategic gains is not present. This study provides for such an integrated framework from the stage of identification of stakeholders, to the design of CSR, to the nature of strategic gains to be incurred. VL - 4 IS - 3 SN - 1747-1117 DO - 10.1108/17471110810892802 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17471110810892802 AU - Sekhar Bhattacharyya Som AU - Sahay Arunditya AU - Pratap Arora Ashok AU - Chaturvedi Abha PY - 2008 Y1 - 2008/01/01 TI - A toolkit for designing firm level strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives T2 - Social Responsibility Journal PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 265 EP - 282 Y2 - 2024/09/19 ER -