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The theoretical understanding of CSR is caught on the horns of the dilemma between the ethical and instrumental approaches. The strategic turn in CSR has brought the dilemma to a new head. The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel argumentative strategy to address the dilemma.

The paper weaves together the insights from the literatures on sociological institutionalism, organization theory, business ethics and institutional economics to elaborate the distinction between CSR communication and CSR action that is actually undertaken and visible to stakeholders. This distinction is at the core of the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach which puts the above dilemma in a new light.

According to the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach, the CSR communication constitutes a competitive arena where corporations are looking for reputational gains. Competitive pressures give rise to an inflationary dynamics of the CSR communication which consequently runs up against credibility problems. These problems are addressed by the real CSR policies which legitimate the corporate employment of the CSR communication as an instrument of competition.

The theoretical dilemma between the ethical and instrumental approaches manifests itself in the justification of skepticism toward CSR communication. This skepticism, which may be to the detriment of a corporation’s license to operate, may turn out to be a driving force of CSR action.

Despite the charges of corporate hypocrisy, CSR communication may play a role in the alleviation of business-society tensions. This role is however subject to two limitations. First, if CSR communication is used as instrument of competition, it is unlikely to translate into CSR action perfectly. Second, corporations would likely prioritize more visible CSR actions over less visible ones.

The novel implication of the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach is that CSR actions present credible commitments or “hostages” enabling the productive interaction between corporations and their stakeholders. This implication integrates some of the components of the ethical and instrumental approaches, while drawing inspiration from the institutional economics and institutional ethics literatures.

This research aims to understand consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) during an unprecedented public health crisis. Specifically, two studies were conducted to investigate how companies’ different CSR initiatives in the early stage of COVID-19 would influence consumers’ advocacy intention according to their focus (i.e. targets of institutional CSR). The first study examined the moderating role of individuals’ CSR expectancy on the effects of companies’ CSR initiatives on consumers’ brand advocacy intention. The second study further extends the findings of Study 1 by examining the mediating role of perceived brand motive.

Two between-subject online experiments were conducted to explore the impact of three types of institutional CSR initiatives (i.e. community, employee and consumer-centered CSRs) on brand advocacy. Study 1 (N = 380) examined the moderating role of CSR expectancy in influencing consumer responses to institutional CSR initiatives. Study 2 (N = 384) explored the underlying mechanism through examining the mediating role of a company’s value-driven motivation in the process.

Study 1 indicated that institutional CSR, regardless of type, was more effective in generating a more significant brand advocacy intention than a promotional message, measured as a baseline. The impact of different kinds of institutional CSR on consumers’ brand advocacy intentions was significantly moderated by their CSR-related expectations. Specifically, individuals with moderate to high CSR expectancy showed higher brand advocacy intentions in both consumer- and employee-centered CSR initiatives than the promotional message. In comparison, those with low CSR expectancy only showed higher brand advocacy intentions in the community-centered CSR initiative. In addition, as individuals’ CSR expectations rose, the mediation effect of the perceived value-driven motivation became stronger.

The current study includes guiding principles to help companies effectively respond to COVID-19 as corporate citizens by demonstrating the importance of individuals’ CSR expectancy across three CSR initiatives. This study used real-life examples of how leading companies were stepping up CSR efforts and suggested an approach that aligns CSR behaviors with the urgent and fundamental human needs of COVID-19.

In line with the CSR goal of maximizing benefits for stakeholders, this study’s findings signal that situational changes determine CSR expectations and that companies must be highly susceptible to the changes in consumers’ expectations of CSR and their appraisal process of CSR motives to maximize its CSR value.

The purpose of the current study is to revisit the relationship between CSR and firm market performance. The authors examine whether a gap between the firm's internal and external CSR moderates the CSR-firm market performance relationship. Additionally, the authors propose that the moderating effect of the CSR gap on this relationship is mediated by firm visibility.

The initial sample is the Fortune 500 firms during the years 2004–2013. The final panel data sample consisted of 1,300 firms and 6,128 observations from 2004 to 2013. The authors obtained data from five different sources: Compustat North America Fundamental Annual, GMI Ratings, Execucomp, IBES and KLD Stats.

The results of this research find evidence that both internal CSR and external CSR were positively related to firm market performance, but that the relationship was stronger for firms with equal emphasis on external and internal CSR activities. Furthermore, the negative moderating effect of the CSR gap was mediated by the firm visibility.

The findings of the study advance our understanding of the CSR-FP relationship. First, the theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence highlight that the CSR-FP relationship exists and that its magnitude is contingent upon the gap between internal and external CSR investments. Second, the authors enhanced theoretical understanding of how and why CSR relates to firm performance by exploring firm visibility as a mediator. Specifically, the authors introduced firm visibility as a mechanism which explains the effect of the interaction of overall CSR with the CSR gap on firm performance.

This study aims to examine the actions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at a national business context that is firmly defined by prolonged financial crisis. It does so by using a critical view on CSR disclosures in an attempt to get to the heart of the real matter of CSR, from both a thematic content and strategic orientation perspective.

This study is based on a sample of 50 firms that operate in the Greek market and belong to the most significant sectors of the national economy. Their CSR disclosures are content-analyzed, providing a body of 836 pragmatic CSR actions.

The key findings of the study denote differences among the examined sectors, with banks and financial services being the most active in terms of CSR actions. Regarding the thematic content, firms choose mainly to implement actions with a societal character, while in terms of strategic orientation, they opt for CSR actions that serve existing cause-related programs without any brand presence. Moreover, profound interest appears for the external business environment, whereas the number of CSR actions with employees’ participation is limited.

The study offers a descriptive account of the actual CSR engagement in Greece amid a prolonged downturn, thus shedding light on the current CSR trends and deficits and helping decision makers embed CSR as an integral part of their business operation.

During adverse economic conditions, this study captures potential discrepancies between the “walk” (doing) and the “talk” (self-reporting) of CSR. In so doing, it contributes to CSR literature by exploring both the “what” and the “how” these actions are implemented.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects a company's value. It does this specifically by analyzing the effect of socially responsible behaviors on shared value (SV) creation, in order to foster higher performance (PRF) and greater competitive advantages, considering the moderator role of the supply chain leadership dependency (SCLD). It provides new insights into CSR management to ensure business sustainability for supply chain management.

This study uses a structured questionnaire to gather data from a cross-sectional sample of 425 supply chain partners for Portugal's biggest energy supplier. Structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed hypotheses, and a multigroup analysis is conducted to find how a supplier's dependency can impact the suggested relationships.

The findings suggest that CSR positively impacts CA, SV and PRF. Additionally, this study reveals that SV has a positive impact on PRF. Additionally, the SCLD appears to moderate some of the proposed relationships.

This paper provides some empirical evidence of the influence of CSR on organizational value creation, contributing toward a better understanding of the impacts of socially responsible behaviors on business sustainability. The overall results may support the importance of CSR, identifying how a socially responsible company may create value for itself and share it with partners, thereby improving performance and competitiveness, while considering the role of dependency in moderating these relationships. Yet, the research considers only one company supplier. The relationships between variables need to be explored in other practical case studies and longitudinal investigations to improve upon the potential for making generalizations.

Results show that being cooperative might make a company more competitive, which might be one of the foundations of CSR and sustainability.

This study claims that profit alone is no longer sufficient for the legitimization of business. As an alternative, SV creation has become the new goal for businesses seeking to regain and improve societal trust.

The overall results may support the importance of CSR, identifying how a socially responsible company may create value for itself and share it with partners, thereby improving performance and competitiveness, while considering the role of dependency in moderating these relationships.

The purpose of the paper is to report on a qualitative research illustrating how equal opportunity ideals as part of a corporate CSR identity project are practiced on the local level.

Investigating the practice of CSR identity making, an ethnographic fieldwork methodology relying on longitudinal participant observations and semi‐structured interviews has been applied.

The authors argue that the practice of equal opportunities should be understood as a process of local interpretation of generally formulated ideals. By viewing the content of CSR identity as a socially negotiated process, it is suggested that a dynamic approach to the concept is required. The practice of equal opportunity is a continuously negotiated process of identity making and of locally relating ideals to practice in the negotiation between different stakeholders.

The article is based on a single case study with a limited number of informants.

This paper has implications for managers who work with CSR initiatives and corporate identity. The authors suggest that policies should be developed in close interaction with the different organizational members. This is necessary in order to manage the mutual expectations. To reach the best results in terms of managing corporate identity, it is necessary to consider CSR as a participative process.

Earlier studies on CSR have described corporate identity in static terms, independent of the local practices and interpretations. By applying a process‐oriented theoretical perspective combined with an iterative data collection, new insights into the actual practice of CSR initiatives are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to inform the business management literature that focuses on the perceptions of business professionals towards the multidimensional and highly complex concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

This study is based on a sample of 118 Greek business executives/middle managers having different functional positions. A questionnaire based on the works of Quazi and O’Brien (2000) and Welford et al. (2007) was designed and used for data collection.

Key findings denote occupational health and safety, benign environmental management as well as responsible production methods as the top CSR priorities. Two different CSR viewpoints emerged from the factor analysis reflecting a pragmatic and a more socially responsive interpretation of corporate responsibility. Cluster analysis confirmed such contrasting perspectives allowing the partition of data in distinctive groups according to the relative inclination on either of the identified viewpoints. Similarity measures obtained from cluster analysis also verified the different CSR positions.

The paper explores CSR perceptions, as predictor factors of CSR performance, in three different groups of Greek business professionals. It contributes to the literature of CSR perspectives from South-East European countries where there is a distinct lack of empirical studies on managerial attitudes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the amount of trust customers have in Somali Islamic banks. Furthermore, the role of gender in CSR activities and Islamic bank clientele is evaluated.

Throughout February and March 2022, 410 clients of Islamic banks in Somalia were surveyed using a questionnaire. The partial least squares approach and the structural equation model are applied to examine the data.

Findings indicate that all variables of CSR activities, such as social product, social legal, social needs, social environment and social employees’ responsibility, are influential and significant predictors of trust in Islamic banks in Somalia. Gender inequalities moderate the relationship between social product, social needs, social environment, social employee and trust. Conversely, only social legal responsibility was unaffected by gender differences in Somalia regarding people’s trust in Islamic banks.

A sample from a developing country such as Somalia is useful for shedding light on the outcomes of consumers’ perceptions of and trust in businesses’ CSR in the developing world. Furthermore, this study contributes to knowledge regarding CSR and how it can help the Islamic banking industry. Its findings will be useful to policymakers and regulatory bodies in the banking industry in their efforts to improve CSR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical investigation of its kind about the understudied relationship among customer trust, CSR efforts and gender in Somalia context. Furthermore, it investigates how gender specifically moderates CSR in the Islamic banking sector in a developing country.

Studies have explored expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) among cultures, but findings are mixed. A more nuanced view of cultural dimensions rather than using Hofstede’s aggregate country scores can offer a stronger empirical foundation for studying the effects of culture. Based on two cultural dimensions and Carroll’s four-dimensional model of CSR, the purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between individualistic/collectivistic values and individuals’ expectations of different types of responsibilities (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic), the relationship between long-term values and individuals’ expectations of different types of responsibilities and the degree of skepticism about CSR related to these values.

This study surveyed panel participants in two countries, South Korea (collectivistic and long term) and the USA (individualistic and short term), chosen because they are at extreme ends of the cultural values continuum. Multi-dimensional aspects of the cultural variables were tested in the samples rather than using national scores as proxy variables for culture. Data were quantitative and various statistical tests including structural equation modeling were used for analysis.

The findings show that horizontal collectivism and the planning dimension of long-term orientation are positively associated with CSR expectations, whereas the tradition dimension of long-term orientation is negatively associated with CSR expectations. In addition, vertical individualism is positively associated with skepticism toward CSR activities.

The differences in types of individual-collectivism (horizontal and vertical) as well as the different aspects of long-term orientation had an effect on the results, pointing to the importance of exploring the nuances of the dimensions as well as the importance of testing them within the sample rather than using aggregated national scores.

Previous studies that used a proxy variable for culture assumed that collectivistic cultures have higher expectations for CSR. While empirically supporting the assumption of the relationship between cultural factors and CSR expectations at the individual level, the study found that people who view themselves as autonomous within a group but accept inequality within the group (vertical individualism) are more likely to be skeptical of CSR activities and suggests that skepticism about CSR may be more closely related to individual viewpoints or to particular contexts or particular corporations rather than to cultural factors, which has implications for international corporate communication.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence that the occurrence of greenwashing has on the consumer perception of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

This paper observed the market indication that a consistent undermining of authentic commitment to CSR taints consumer perception. Investigating how the motivations behind greenwashing contribute to the presentation of CSR was the first means of examining the market forces. Consumer orientation was used as a guiding principle to consider the short- and long-term perspective of a greenwasher.

Individual instances of greenwashing contribute to a collective deterioration of marketplace trust in the promises of CSR. The negative influence on CSR is not isolated to the greenwashing perpetrator but casts a wider effect. The consequences of greenwashing are not isolated but widely dispersed.

Whilst much of the literature focuses on the stigmatisation of individual firms, it is crucial to note how marketplace trust is eroded. In addition, the perception of CSR-related regulations is for example influenced but rarely recognised as a consequence of greenwashing behaviour.