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This study aims to advance two sets of explanation on the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – one set of explanation in the context of a developed country, USA, and another in the context of a developing country, India. The discussion includes the period after mandatory CSR rules were implemented in India.

This is a conceptual paper on the historical evolution of CSR in the USA and India. It reviews the chronological evolution of CSR. It compares the phases of CSR evolution between the two countries by tracking their CSR growth curves.

This study divides the evolution of CSR in the USA into four phases – conceptualization, introduction, growth and consolidation. In the first two phases, the rate of growth in CSR increases at a decreasing rate; in the growth phase, it increases at an increasing rate which stabilizes in the consolidation phase. In the Indian context, the study considers a three phase growth – conceptualization, introduction and growth. In the first two phases, the growth in CSR curve is inelastic. In the third phase, the growth rate increases but at a rate less than that in the USA.

Though past research has examined historical evolution of CSR in the US context, scant research has tracked CSR evolution in India. Not many studies have compared the growth of CSR between developed and developing countries. This study also contributes the concept of CSR growth curves to the extant literature on CSR.

Over the last several decades, businesses have faced mounting pressures from diverse stakeholders to alter their corporate operations to become more socially and environmentally responsible. In turn, many firms appear to have responded by implementing more sustainable practices — measuring, documenting, and publishing annual CSR or sustainability reports to showcase how they are addressing important issues in this area, including: resource stewardship, waste management, greenhouse gas emission reductions, fair and safe labor practices, amongst other stakeholder concerns. And yet, research in this domain has not yet systematically examined whether businesses have, on the whole, changed their practices in tandem with the important changes in its institutional context over time. Have corporate CSR initiatives, in fact, been growing over the last 25 years or has the increased attention to CSR actually been much ado about nothing? In this chapter, we review the empirical literature on CSR to uncover that common measures of CSR such as the KLD do not support the concept that CSR practices have increased substantively over the last 25 years. We supplement this historical review by modeling the growth curves of CSR implementation in practice and find that the pace of positive change has indeed been glacial. More alarmingly, we also look at corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and find that, contrary to expectations, businesses have become more, not less, irresponsible during this same time period. Implications of these findings for theory are presented as are suggestions for future research in this domain.

Promoting customer–company identification (CCI) has become a crucial relationship marketing strategy for service firms. The purpose of this study is to examine how customers’ perceptions of service quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect CCI over time. More importantly, a comparative analysis is conducted to compare the long-term effectiveness of service quality versus CSR in forming CCI.

A conceptual framework is developed and then empirically examined using latent growth curve modeling. The study data were collected from restaurant customers in Taiwan in four waves of 213 repeated measures.

The results of this study show that customers’ perceptions of both service quality and CSR affect CCI. Particularly, the results of this study indicate that compared with service quality, customers’ perceived CSR has a stronger effect in the promotion of CCI over time.

This study offers a new insight for service marketing practitioners who are planning and implementing strategies for enhancing CCI. The findings suggest that relationship investments are more effective over the long term when service firms shift their investment priority over time from achieving high service quality to increasing consumers’ belief in the firm’s commitment to CSR.

Though previous research has explored the various drivers of CCI, longitudinal examinations are surprisingly scarce in this context. Using latent growth curve modeling, this study examines how CCI antecedents influence changes in CCI over time. More importantly, this study reveals that CSR has a stronger long-term impact on CCI than service quality.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether and how independent director-CEO friendliness has an impact on the enterprise's sustainable growth capability and further explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and executive compensation affect the relationship in the Chinese context.

Using a sample of Chinese-listed companies from 2010 to 2020, the study adopts fixed effects models to empirically analyze the effect of independent director-CEO friendliness on the enterprise's sustainable growth capability and the roles of CSR and executive compensation.

This study finds that independent director-CEO friendliness is significantly positively correlated with the sustainable growth capability of an enterprise, and this effect is enhanced with the improvement of the degree of CSR fulfillment. What is more, the positive relationship between independent director-CEO friendliness and the enterprise's sustainable growth capability becomes stronger with higher executive compensation.

Given that the existing research on sustainable growth capability mainly focused on the macroeconomic field, this study is of great theoretical significance in exploring the relationship between independent director-CEO friendliness and the enterprise's sustainable growth capability from the micro-level, contributing to the research on the enterprise's sustainable growth capability. In addition, this study considers the boundary conditions of CSR and executive compensation from internal and external perspectives, respectively, as it is innovative to elucidate organizational development from the perspective of internal and external balance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the “mash‐up” of business strategy and corporate social responsibility (CSR). In popular music, a mash‐up is a file of digitally combined musical sources. Song A is played simultaneously with Song B, and in various other combinations. There are often elements of dissonance, and even cacophony, to the form – but the sum of the parts often surpasses the originals. CSR is a management innovation like the idea of business strategy itself. Each is also a metaphor representing alternative visions and approaches to corporate value creation. Business strategists are talking, writing, and meeting about CSR, and CSR is increasingly intersecting, integrating, converging, with business strategy. The trend is described within as a “mash‐up”. But what is the significance of this trend? How serious should companies be about it? Is CSR going to become a part of standard business theory and practice? How long will it take? What should organizations do to respond and participate?

This paper examines two propositions. First, that CSR is more than a set of ideas and processes; it is a metaphor for a different approach to business. Second, CSR is a management innovation like strategic planning itself. The paper concludes that the impact the two ideas will have on each other and society is fundamentally unpredictable, but it is likely that eventually the current CSR mania will subside and disillusionment will set in.

CSR is a highly significant trend, and well‐managed companies are already taking it very seriously. CSR may become a part of standard business theory and practice, but not without evolving through adoption patterns that will necessarily involve some disillusionment. Leaders will guide their company through this period by focusing on how to make CSR “real” for their organization by embracing the business strategy/CSR mash‐up and driving growth and innovation within the new parameters.

Familiarizes business strategists with CSR and CSR practitioners with points of connection and overlap with business strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of peers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) on focal firms’ CSR from an integrated perspective. The current study aims to explore whether as peers’ CSR increases focal firms’ CSR would first decrease and then increase.

This study is based on a sample consisting of Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2016. Hypotheses are tested by generalized least squares method to minimum heterogeneity and autocorrelation concern.

The results show that focal firms’ CSR would first decrease and then increase with the increase in peers’ CSR. Furthermore, this paper found that corporate visibility would stress more value on CSR differentiation strategy and environmental uncertainty would stress more value on CSR conformity strategy, such that the U-shaped relationship would be more pronounced in high corporate visibility or low environmental uncertainty situation.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers and managers. For researchers, it is important to understand how focal firms would practice CSR in response to peers’ CSR, especially through an integrated perspective. For managers, the results show that the best way to invest in CSR activities in response to peers’ CSR follows a U-shaped curve, and corporate visibility and environmental uncertainty are important factors to be considered to make CSR decisions.

This study contributes to the literature by proposing and examining a U-shaped relationship between peers’ CSR and focal firms’ CSR, which stresses the conformity and differentiation value of CSR simultaneously. Besides, to fully map the effects of peers’ CSR and focal firms’ CSR, this paper considers the moderating roles of internal and external contingencies on this non-linear relationship between the peers’ CSR and focal firms’ CSR.

In a world characterised by increasing environmental and social awareness, the number of corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives has significantly grown. Among these, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is one of the most important, involving more than 12,000 companies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the UNGC’s worldwide diffusion, both at country and industry level, to understand the reasons leading to the highlighted dissemination patterns, and to propose various future projections.

The study pursues its objectives by applying the logistic curve model to data provided by the United Nations. The analysis is complemented by adopting instability and concentration indexes.

Results suggest that, while human rights and environmental safeguard in some areas and industries will remain a controversial issue, UNGC adoption will continue growing and giving the participants the required legitimacy to compete in worldwide markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that analyses the UNGC’s worldwide diffusion and proposes a prediction model for its future dissemination. The findings are of considerable importance in extending the knowledge of the initiative and in understanding the potential values of its adoption.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sales revenue of two retail companies (Marks & Spencer and Tesco) in the UK to understand how CSR activities can influence retail sales growth. Prior studies have used different theoretical and methodological approaches to report the relationships between CSR and financial performance generally as positive, negative, mixed or neutral, and these are yet to be conclusive.

Clarifying the existing inconclusive results, the authors deduced donations, community work and environmental responsibility CSR activities from the literature and mapped them out onto sales revenue to formulate conceptual propositions. The authors extracted the corresponding data from the companies’ websites and financial reports, focusing on their 2006-2014 CSR and sales activities, and statistically analysed the longitudinal data with Pearson correlation coefficient.

The findings revealed positive correlations between donations and sales revenue for the two companies, which suggest that retailers’ philanthropic activities can boost sales levels overtime. Whereas the findings on the community work and the environmental-friendly activities relate either positively or negatively to sales revenue for the companies.

There is an indication for retail managers to pursue philanthropic activities to effect sales growth. Retailers exhibiting features of Marks & Spencer can commit to community investment to increase revenue over time, whereas those showing features of Tesco can pledge environmental-friendly strategies to influence a stronger correlation between carbon emissions and sales revenue levels.

The outcomes support the extant findings that donations can improve retail sales performance, while community work and the environmental-friendly activities do not necessarily improve sales growth in the retail sector but suggest that retailers can exploit more of the ones that benefit their sales revenue levels. Theoretically, the study supports the stakeholder theory’s influence on firms’ obligation to charitable cause, community investment and environmental-friendly responsibility as CSR activities that make retailers morally responsible to their customers and society in general, whereas the sustainable development model was instrumental in retailers’ CSR activities relating to environmental protection.

This chapter examines Unilever's transformation in sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) over the past decade. It tracks the author's involvement with an internal team that studied Unilever's world “outside in” and “inside out” through the engagement of over 100 organizational leaders to awaken the company for change. The case reports how Unilever embraced a “vitality mission” to align its strategies and organization around sustainability and CSR and infuse social and environmental content into its corporate and product brands. Among the innovations described are certification of the sources of sustainable fish and tea, Dove's inner-beauty campaign, and several “bottom of the pyramid” efforts. Particular attention is given to the makeover of its high-growth Asian business. The transformation is examined as a “catalytic” approach to change and discussed with reference to theories of complex adaptive systems. This raises theoretical questions about the role of top-down versus more communal leadership, the importance of mission versus vision in guiding change, and the relevance of emotive and psycho-spiritual versus more programmatic interventions in the rearchitecture of an organization as it progresses on sustainability and CSR.

The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance (FP) has bourgeoned widespread debate among researchers. In recent years, the debate has explored more dynamic links, one of which is the curvilinear relationship, between CSR and FP. This paper aims to empirically test the curvilinear relationship between CSR and FP in the context of Indian companies.

This paper empirically tests the curvilinear relationship between CSR and FP in the context of Indian companies. The study used a panel data of 43 listed companies over a period of ten years from 2008 to 2017. A correlation and panel regression were carried out to examine the possible link.

The findings demonstrate that a curvilinear relationship exists between CSR and FP, suggesting that two long competing viewpoints may be complementary.

The study mainly focuses on top companies, so the generalizations of results to other small companies are unwanted.

An immediate managerial implication of the findings suggests that to serve the interests of the shareholders, a long-run planning and considerable resources should be dedicated at this direction, given that CSR expenditure does not pay off immediately.

In the Indian context, very few studies have analyzed the linkages between CSR and FP. Using an improved and distinctive approach, the study empirically tests the relationship between CSR and FP from non-linear perspective.