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This study aims to identify and analyze the different roles corporate social responsibility (CSR) can play in corporate strategy. By acknowledging that one of the biggest challenges for companies in committing to sustainability is the strategy work, the authors outline specific strategic initiatives to achieve these roles and the strategic outcomes that will follow such initiatives.

Four illustrative case examples show how companies are recasting the role of CSR. The new CSR roles are characterized through two strategic dimensions: an inside-out (firm-oriented) vs outside-in (market-oriented) orientation and an emphasis on leveraging vs an emphasis on prospecting activities.

The findings show that to realize the opportunities of CSR for business, the environment and society at large, the role of CSR in the boardroom must be reconfigured. By recasting its role, CSR can become a driver for the strategy process and a transformative force generating strategic changes.

This paper aims to encourage top executives to take a proactive stance toward responsibility, recognize the new roles and potential impact that CSR can have in corporate strategy and assist strategic decision-making regarding CSR.

The paper aims to move beyond integrating sustainability into existing strategies and business models by demonstrating how sustainability can also inspire strategic changes a priori when the role of CSR is recast in companies. By viewing CSR as a driver of corporate strategy and strategic initiatives, the authors suggest that besides helping the environment, the community and society, CSR can take care of corporate strategy.

The purpose of this research is to explore how consumers co-create sustainable corporate brands (SCBs) by framing brands with a newly adopted sustainability orientation.

The qualitative data were generated from four focus groups consisting of altogether 25 Finnish millennial consumers. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and the resulting themes were classified as different framings.

The findings indicate three ways of framing SCBs: as signs of corporate hypocrite, as threats that increase societal fragmentation and as signs of corporate enlightenment. These framings are based on two components: the perceived attributes and activities of the corporate brand.

The role of corporate brands is expanding from the business sphere towards actively influencing society. Yet, sustainability activities can be risky if consumers, as primary stakeholders, deem them unacceptable, unethical or untrustworthy. This research supports brand managers to succeed in co-creating SCBs as contributors to societal and environmental well-being, at a time when multiple stakeholders consider this a worthwhile endeavour.

The theoretical contribution is twofold: firstly, the paper extends the sustainable corporate branding literature by demonstrating how SCBs are co-created through an interactive framing process between the corporation and primary stakeholders, and, secondly, it contributes to the constitutive approach to corporate social responsibility communication (CSRC) research by showing how millennial consumers frame corporate brands that communicate corporations' newly adopted sustainability orientation.