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The purpose of this study was to explore the motives (especially the agency motives) for corporate diversification from the perspective of corporate executives who make such strategic decisions and manage the diversified firms daily.

A qualitative research approach was adopted, and 12 chief executive officers (CEOs) of diversified firms in Nigeria were interviewed for their perspectives on the motives for corporate diversification.

Stewardship motives – diversification to use excess capacities in assets and resources to exploit opportunities in the market and defend against adverse environmental developments – were the most cited reasons for diversification. The relevant agency problem related to corporate diversification motive in Nigeria is the principal–principal (majority shareholder-minority shareholder) one. CEOs with substantial holdings in their firms indicated that they use diversification to reduce their investment risk and retain control of their portfolio.

The findings suggest that in corporate environments such as Nigeria that feature blockholding prominently, the corporate strategy-related agency problem that policymakers should pay greater attention to is the principal–principal conflict rather than the traditional agent–principal problem that has influenced corporate governance over the years. There is also a need to revise the dominant view that diversification is a value-destroying strategy motivated by the self-seeking behavior of managers who have little or no shares in the companies they manage.

The few studies on motives for corporate diversification that incorporated the perspectives of corporate executives did not address the agency motives of diversification. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has done so.

Literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has given much attention to the impact of CSR initiatives on business performance. However, managing customers’ attributions to the company’s social activities are also needed. This study aims to extend the existing knowledge by examining the role of social justice as a moderating variable in the relationships among corporate brand image, CSR motive, corporate brand trust and loyalty.

The research data were collected from a sample of 710 respondents in Indonesia through an online survey. The variables used in this study’s questionnaire were adapted from previous studies. The focus of the survey was a COVID-19-related social activity conducted by the biggest private telecommunication company in Indonesia. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

The results showed that social justice moderated the relationship between corporate brand image and CSR motive. Also, social justice that revealed fairness in social life could influence how customers respond on company social activities and thus create corporate brand trust and loyalty.

This study focused on only one company and one type of CSR activity (i.e. philanthropy) that might limit its generalizability. Future studies can focus on other types of CSR activities from various companies and industries.

In designing their social activities, companies must consider the importance of social justice. Companies need to address customers’ concerns toward social and society problems, especially to overcome social, environmental or health problems. Hereinafter, companies must design CSR activities that establish and accentuate their value motives by creating communication through media and public relations activities to symbolize their high concern for social problems or disasters.

Most previous studies consider the outcome of social activities and their impact on business performance. This study focuses on the impact of corporate brand image and social justice (as an individual characteristics) on CSR (social activities) and how it can further enhance business performance (corporate brand trust, corporate brand image, loyalty) and enrich CSR research in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives of Indian firms for engaging with corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and their interplay by using interpretive structural modelling methodology (ISM) and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis.

The research uses ISM and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis to find the structural relationship among the CSR motives of the Indian firms identified from the past literature and agreed upon by the experts.

The ISM model indicates that firms primarily engage in CSR either because of top management commitment to certain values, to meet the legal mandate or of the pressure from the NGOs. The top management commitment gives a strategic orientation to CSR, which results in community engagement by the firm as one of the important components of the strategy. The community engagement helps in engaging with its employees and investors along with finding sources of innovations, which, in turn, help the firm in engaging its customers, managing corporate reputation and getting a cost advantage. Collectively, these help them in improving their financial performance. However, the model highlights two autonomous sources, meeting legal mandate and pressure from NGOs also motivate firms to engage in CSR without having any strategic thought or engagement with its strategic system.

The study provides a comprehensive listing of CSR motives of Indian firms along with the structural relationships among the identified CSR motives. The model developed provides CSR professionals and policymakers an understanding of the primary CSR motives along with their driving power and dependence. This insight will help them in manipulating these motives for better CSR engagement by the Indian firms.

This study examines gestures, themes, message copy points and imagery, and strategy motives reflected in corporate advertising appearing in the China Times and United Daily News, two leading newspapers, in the month following the devastating Chin‐Chin earthquake in Taiwan in September 1999. The study identified four possible corporate strategy motives in post‐crisis corporate communications: social responsibility, communal relationship building, enlightened self‐interest and impression management. A content analysis of adverts (n=100) suggested communal relationship building drove corporate advertising endeavours. Corporate philanthropy was the most common gesture described in the adverts, and the most frequent themes and message components focused on the restoration of society. No significant differences were found between companies headquartered in Taiwan versus elsewhere, or between companies headquartered in Asia versus the West. Implications for examining crisis communications and underlying motives behind public relations communications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how stakeholders perceive the motives behind fast food companies’ public health-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) and general social issue-related CSR initiatives, and their responses toward CSR in terms of supportive communication intent, investment intent, and purchase intent. The authors further examine the impact of perceived CSR motives on intent and whether a healthier chain image has an effect on stakeholder responses.

An online experiment was conducted. This study employed a randomized 2 (CSR type: health-related CSR vs generic social issue-related CSR)×2 (chain image: healthier chain vs general fast-food chain) full factorial design using general stakeholder samples.

For an ordinary fast food restaurant, generic social issue-related CSR programs elicited significantly more positive perceptions of CSR motives, supportive communication intent and investment intent, than public-health related CSR. When a company has a healthier image, stakeholders do not distinguish between CSR types. Stakeholders perceive both CSR types as stemming from mutually beneficial motives and show neutral to slightly positive reactions to both CSR. A positively perceived CSR motive plays a determinant role in anticipating communication, investment, and purchase intents.

This is the first study that examines stakeholder perception of motives behind and responses toward fast food chains’ health-related vs generic social issue-related CSR initiatives, in light of corporate image. The study findings help public relations practitioners, public health professionals, parent groups, and legislators understand stakeholders’ reactions toward CSR initiatives in the fast food industry and help them monitor practices for improvements.

This paper examines how the inferred motives for corporate philanthropy relate to the types of charitable causes supported.

Published data were obtained for 256 publicly traded and private corporations from a variety of sources.

The results demonstrated that a number of motives were not significantly related to total charitable giving, but were related to how charitable funds were distributed to various charitable causes. Thus, the study provides insights on the strategic use of corporate charity as means of achieving various business objectives and advancing a theoretical understanding of corporate philanthropy strategies.

This study only investigated some of the presumed motives for corporate philanthropy. Even for the motives investigated in this study, no attempt was made to examine all the motivational factors that determine the level of need for a specific motive. Thus, while the present study provides some of the first evidence of a relationship between motivational factors and data on the types of charitable causes supported, there are other motivational factors that could be investigated in future studies.

The results have a number of implications for managers of nonprofit organizations such as marketing/targeting potential donors. Additionally, the results could be useful for managers of for profit firms in terms of comparing corporate strategies with competing firms.

The study provides a framework for investigating the relationship between motivational factors and types of charitable causes supported.

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this study aims to examine how employee volunteer program (EVP) type, corporate visual identity, and issue involvement affect external publics' attributions of EVPs and attitudes toward the company.

A 2 (EVP type: skills-based vs. not-skills-based) × 2 (salience of corporate visual identity: high vs. low) randomized experiment was conducted with 157 participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A fictitious company and its EVP messages were created to control for the company's existing reputation and participants' past experiences with the company.

Participants responded positively toward EVP messages regardless of the EVP type. However, salient corporate visual identity significantly aroused participants' more attributed firm-serving motives, which led to more negative attitudes toward the company. Next, issue involvement presented its value in EVP communication as highly involved participants displayed favorable attributions of EVPs and positive attitudes toward the company.

This study approaches EVPs as an important CSR practice and expands the discussion on strategic CSR communication by uncovering the roles of central and peripheral cues in public responses to EVP messages. Moreover, the findings highlight the importance of fostering and enhancing publics' issue involvement in achieving successful EVP communication.

Drawing on multi-theoretical lenses and a combination of supply chain and business ethics literature, this study aims to investigate the role of motives in driving sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices and sustainable performance.

Using a sample of 205 supply chain companies in the USA, the authors apply structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to empirically test the proposed model and seven hypothesized relationships.

Results of the study underscore the critical role of moral motives, while highlighting that all three types of motives (instrumental, relational and moral) are robust in driving SSCM practices and achieving improvement in all three dimensions of sustainable performance–economic, environmental and social.

This research can help supply chain scholars develop a more robust subfield of motivation-based SSCM research to gain a deeper understanding of how motives may differentially predict sustainable supply chain practices and performance.

The results of this study demonstrate the critical links between moral motivation and the triple bottom line (TBL) performance and suggest that managers pay more attention to moral motives in their decision-making.

This study bridges gaps in the extant literature by incorporating motivation-based antecedents, expanding the scope of SSCM practices, including the social dimension of sustainability and investigating the mediating effects of SSCM practices on the links between motives and the TBL performance.

Recent studies have observed rise in consumer’s ethical concerns about the online retailers while making a purchase decision. The impetus for businesses to use corporate social responsibility (CSR) is evident, but the effects of CSR motives on corresponding processes underlying cause-related marketing (CRM) patronage intention have not been thoroughly examined. This study, anchored on attribution theory, established a research model that better explains the influence of CSR motives on patronage intentions toward CRM-oriented online retailers. Additionally, this study aims to examine the moderating role of spirituality (SPT) on CSR motives and CRM patronage intention (CPI).

Primary data has been collected from 722 respondents and analyzed by using deep neural-network architecture by using the innovative PLS-SEM-ANN method to predict/rank the factors impacting CPI.

The results revealed the normalized importance of the predictors of CPI and found that value-driven motive was the strongest predictor, followed by strategic motive, SPT, age and stakeholder-driven motive. In contrast, egoistic motive, education and income were found insignificant.

The pandemic has transformed the way consumers shop and fortified the online economy, thereby resulting in a paradigm shift toward usage of e-commerce platforms. The results offer valuable insights to online retailers and practitioners for predicting patronage intentions by CSR motives and, thus, effectively engage CRM consumers by designing promotions in a way that would deeply resonate with them. This study assessed and predicted the factors influencing the CPI s, thereby guiding the online retailers to design CSR strategies and manage crucial CRM decisions.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication covered by the news media is considered as more credible and effective in shaping public perceptions toward corporations than CSR shared by corporations themselves. This is particularly true when CSR is about corporations with social stigma inherent in business practices. This study examines the CSR publicity of stigmatized industries from the journalism lens.

A content analysis was conducted with CSR stories from 2019 to 2020 by USA newspapers (n = 348).

Results of this study showed that the overall volume of CSR from stigmatized industries has decreased, with fewer responses to the recent pandemic. Further, the media brought promotional CSR activities and the business motives behind the activities into focus. Opposing patterns were found for CSR of non-stigmatized industries presented with philanthropic activities based on corporations' social motives to help communities. Similarly, economic and legal responsibilities reflected in the CSR pyramid were more prominently reported for stigmatized industries, and ethical and discretionary responsibilities appeared more frequently for non-stigmatized industries.

Integrating business and media literature, this study enriches scholarly discussions on media processes and effects for CSR communication. This study also provides practical implications for stigmatized industries by highlighting more authentic and careful approaches for CSR communication to earn positive publicity.

This study provides social implications by highlighting the importance of CSR communications through the lens of news media when corporations are socially stigmatized.

Stigmatized industries are known to be active in CSR communication to nullify social stigma surrounding themselves. The authors' findings provide empirical evidence suggesting that not all publicity benefits CSR communication for stigmatized corporations.