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The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of research studies on the drivers and consequences of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

This paper used a systematic literature review using research papers published on the drivers and consequence of global CSR from 2010 to 2020.

The findings of this paper show that the principal themes of published research articles on the drivers and consequences of CSR are internal drivers, external drivers and consequences of CSR. Publications on the drivers and consequences of global CSR have been dominated by studies that used quantitative approach and cross-sectional design. A significant number of studies also used secondary data source with most of these studies not being sensitive to sectorial influences. More importantly, this study revealed that the emphasis of CSR on actions that demonstrate social responsibility is more associated with overall financial performance and firm value when contrasted against ethical statements of social responsibility which is associated with weaker firm financial performance and outcomes. Moreover the review indicated that the level of CSR engagement and disclosure has been associated with higher share prices whereas low level of CSR disclosure in sensitive industries results in lower share prices. In addition, employees’ intention has been identified as a critical driver for CSR activities. Furthermore, it was also identified that firms engage in CSR because of internal institutional factors such as ethical corporate culture and top management commitment, whereas external drivers of CSR include socio-political factors, globalisation and environmental accountability.

CSR is an area that can be harnessed to contribute to sustainable solutions to global challenges. It also provides an added advantage of ensuring that the perpetuation of the relationship between businesses and society are more complementary.

This review is one of the few studies focussed on highlighting the drivers and consequences of global CSR. This review also provides proof of the areas of research that need attention and provides recommendation on future areas of study on the drivers and consequences of global CSR.

This chapter intends to contribute to the debate on the determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their impact on performance measurement and communication systems. It aims at analyzing the relationship between the reasons why firms adopt CSR and the importance given to voluntary CSR disclosure.

Two main categories of CSR determinants have been identified: the external ones, coming from the environment outside the firm, and the internal determinants, which are linked to some specific characteristics of the enterprise and to the objectives it pursues.

The analyzed sample consists of 120 large Italian manufacturing and nonmanufacturing enterprises. The research hypotheses concerning the relationship between external and internal determinants of CSR and CSR disclosure were verified using an independent sample t-test, evaluating the equal variances of clusters using the Levene’s test.

Main results point out that in companies giving importance to CSR disclosure, the internal drivers are more relevant than the external ones in determining the attitude toward CSR. Among the internal determinants, drivers related to company and management values and ethics are quite relevant.

This study is subject to the limitations that generally apply to cross-sectional survey-based research.

Our research findings show that legitimacy theory represents the most relevant theory in explaining CSR disclosure practices of Italian large firms, as well as the operational implementation of stakeholder theory, such as stakeholder management. On the contrary, institutional theory only partially explains CSR disclosure, with respect to the pressures coming from financial markets.

Using upper echelons theory (UET), the purpose of this paper is to unravel the influence of a CEO’s ethical ideology on the presence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure on corporate websites. It also considers the CEO’s perception of the importance of CSR (i.e. the extent of the CEO’s detachment from the stockholder-oriented logic and attachment to the stakeholder-oriented logic).

First, a survey was sent to CEOs of large unlisted Belgian companies. Its intention was to assess CEOs’ ethical ideology along the idealism and relativism dimensions and their perceptions on the importance of CSR (PRESOR-detachment-from-stockholder view; PRESOR-attachment-to-stakeholder view), and to gather some demographics. Second, a content analysis of corporate websites was conducted so as to classify companies as being either CSR disclosing or non-disclosing. Third, the annual accounts of these corporations were investigated and follow-up phone calls were conducted to obtain data on managerial discretion (MD).

CEOs’ ethical ideology influences the degree to which they detach from the stockholder-oriented logic and attach to the stakeholder-oriented logic. Moreover, when MD is high, the degree of these CEOs’ attachment to the stakeholder-oriented logic is the factor that influences the presence of CSR disclosure on their corporate websites. Finally, CEO’s idealism indirectly influences the presence of CSR disclosure through the effect of idealism on the degree to which CEOs attach to the stakeholder-oriented logic.

This paper shows that, when MD is high, CEOs’ values and perceptions influence CSR disclosure decisions. This study thereby enhances our knowledge regarding the internal drivers of CSR disclosure practices and offers UET as a lens through which the importance of CEOs’ personal characteristics in the decision-making process might be further explored.

This study aims to explore the effects of long-term orientation (LTO) and strategy formation mode on corporate social responsibility. While many researchers have investigated how large businesses address corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is little empirical evidence on how small- and medium-sized businesses implement CSR or what individual drivers shape this process.

The paper surveyed 282 small and medium-sized managers from the United Kingdom. The respondents were recruited using platform Prolific Academic.

The findings reveal that LTO is a prerequisite for developing CSR and shapes strategy formation mode. The findings also suggested that deliberate strategies are positively related to CSR. The results are consistent across different components of LTO (futurity, continuity and perseverance) and CSR types (internal and external).

The results show that all aspects of LTO are relevant for CSR in SMEs. Besides LTO, deliberate strategy formation model is an important factor contributing to CSR. The paper presents as first an empirical contribution to the strategy literature by examining positive relationship between LTO and deliberate strategy formation mode.

Despite the relevance of firm size in the analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement, there is still much to know about the specific impact of firm size on CSR formalisation. Moreover, in order to better understand such a relation, the interaction effects of development strategies on which companies may base its growth, namely diversification and internationalisation, will be also taken into account. Specifically, this work contributes to shed light on these issues by combining theories related to external and internal drivers of CSR. Using a sample of Spanish listed firms, the results show that firm size affects positively CSR formalisation, and that this effect is stronger in the case of adopting a diversification strategy, while no evidence was found for the moderating effect of internationalisation strategy.

This paper aims to investigate the patterns of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and disclosures of firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).

A total of 43 CSR indices under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s nine CSR components were used to quantify the CSR disclosures. The nine CSR components are good governance, environment, consumer protections, fair business practices, human rights, labor standards, community and society, innovation and anti-corruption. The common patterns of the CSR disclosures were subsequently identified using factor analysis.

The factor analysis identified four domains of the CSR disclosures of the SET-listed firms: employee relations, environment, anti-corruption and philanthropic efforts. Importantly, an increasing number of Thai firms are now attaching greater significance to the employee relations aspect of CSR, as opposed to in the past. In addition, an increasing number of the Thai companies have either initiated or participated in the anti-corruption campaigns.

The research offers an insight into the current development in CSR practices and disclosures in Thailand, as compared to a decade ago. To that end, this research conducted a survey on the CSR disclosures in relation to the nine CSR components, and factor analysis was used to establish the patterns of CSR practices. The findings are of great use to regulators in formulating legal frameworks and strategies to engage companies in CSR and also provide further evidence on the CSR practices in an emerging economy. Furthermore, the findings offer businesses and industries a disclosure benchmark, against which firms decide on the nature and extent of CSR information to disclose in the annual statements.

Despite the expected benefits to stakeholders, as well as the number of contributes aiming at identifying and proposing best practices on the integrated reporting (IR) adoption, it seems that the IR struggles to be diffused in companies. Several are the reasons explaining this evidence. It could mainly be the consequence of some critical issues underlying IR implementation, such as difficulties in the complete application of the IR framework.

Strictly related to this last aspect is the topic of the IR quality that recently has begun to gain interest both in the literature and in the empirical research. Particularly, the issues of IR quality and its determinants now appear to be more important than the IR quantity.

Starting from these premises, this chapter aims to identify the determinants of IR quality. The authors have identified main drivers of IR quality, considering previous studies on voluntary disclosure and in particular on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability disclosure while with reference to the quality assessment of IR, the authors have used the Integrated Reporting Scoreboard, recently proposed in the literature.

After developing the research hypothesis, an empirical analysis has been carried out on a sample of IRs issued by 55 companies in a three-year period.

The main research results highlight, on the one hand, that the main determinants of IR quality are the country where the company operates, in particular European ones and mandatory IR countries; on the other hand, industry and firm’s size don’t seem to have a positive impact on IR quality.

This study aims to posit that managerial value would be one of the responsible factors for the difference in corporate social responsibility practice among businesses. It then empirically tested the effect of managerial value, with the moderation of organizational culture, on corporate social responsibility practice.

The authors have devised a “moderated micro-macro model” type of multilevel model, wherein managerial value took the micro (individual level) predictor variable role, stakeholder-based corporate social responsibility practice the macro (organizational level) outcome variable role and organizational culture the macro level moderating variable role. Because they need the attention of inquiry, large manufacturing firms in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, with a sample size of 53, constituted the organizational level units. The recent performance of the firms against corporate social responsibility practice and organizational culture have been judged by 473 randomly chosen employees. Managerial value has been rated by randomly picked managers, numbered 253. Analytically, Croon and van Veldhoven’s multilevel analytical package and Mplus software suited the designed model.

The study has revealed that managerial value, indeed, is a potential positive driver of CSR practice, the two managerial value dimensions demonstrated differential effects on corporate social responsibility practice and only one of the organizational culture dimensions, hierarchical culture, played a moderation role in managerial value – corporate social responsibility practice link.

The model and this empirical test have not been previously verified.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) may serve as a regulatory framework for corporate practices or as a management trend that helps to improve the legitimacy of corporations. This article explores whether and how petroleum corporations' adherence to standardised CSR instruments has influenced how they deal with climate change.

Comparative case study of Hydro and Shell based on assessments of central documents, publications on CSR and interviews with corporate representatives.

The management trend mode of CSR has prevailed within both companies. Company conduct is deeply influenced by the global petroleum field, but it mainly promotes CSR as legitimacy enhancer and hinders the instruments in working as regulative frameworks. Hydro executives have no aim of applying the CSR instruments to guide their actions. Executives at Shell have tried, but without being fully able to get the vast Shell group to adapt. Thus far, the failure of CSR as a regulative framework seems to contribute to its success as legitimacy enhancing concept. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether the two trends will continue to contrast or if they may start to work in conjunction.

Due to the global organisational span of such corporations, CSR research may gain from focussing specifically on institutionalisation processes at the level of their global organisational field.

The negative trade‐off between CSR as legitimacy enhancer and as a regulative framework may represent a core concern for CSR practitioners. Further, the findings indicate that it may prove more fruitful to develop CSR instruments within specific organisational fields than to focus on holistic instruments.

The framework applied tracks micro‐effects of the instruments and provides insights into the relative importance of company‐internal and ‐external factors. This may prove fruitful for CSR research directed at other business and social concerns.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how business enterprises in Uganda manage their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and projects.

The investigations focused on a limited number of management facets. Using a cross‐sectional survey design, the researchers collected data through both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. These included semi‐structured interviews with managers of selected enterprises, as well as non‐participant observation of CSR activities and projects.

The findings show unbalanced engagement in CSR for business managers in Uganda. Managers are largely motivated towards CSR by external factors such as attracting and retaining customers, enhancing reputation and operational efficiencies to achieve competitive advantage, rather than internal factors such as CSR policies, employee welfare and CSR reporting. Another significant finding is that the responsibility to initiate, administer, and monitor CSR activities is largely vested in middle‐level managers. These factors pose many challenges to CSR implementation amongst managers in Uganda.

This study was a follow‐up of a baseline survey, “CSR in Uganda: perceptions, approaches, and needs of companies”, which was conducted earlier by the lead researcher. The value of this paper is that it provides an in‐depth insight into the status of CSR management in Uganda, which in turn will help both the public and private sectors to identify potential gaps, weaknesses and/or needs for improvement. In the long run, this will improve the image, development impact and performance of CSR undertakings for the benefit of all stakeholders in Uganda.