Exploring the strategic edge of corporate social responsibility: a process model to uncover the missing links

Abstract

Concern of researchers and reviewers on incongruent theoretical exposition and inconclusive empirical results linking corporate social responsible (CSR) actions and firm performance, drives this paper to come up with a three-stage process model which explains how strategic CSR actions contribute to firm performance. This paper also addresses the concern of critics regarding the business value of CSR by espousing a multidisciplinary theoretical approach which covers literature from CSR, social capital and resource based view. Such a theoretical exposition and the exploratory process model - a result of synthesis of fifty-four published business cases- uncover that the relation between CSR actions and firm performance is far from simple and is affected by numerous socio-economic and organizational variables. Recognizing the inter relationship among these dimensions and variables might enrich our understanding of the strategic nature of CSR and might lead to a rich research agenda that links CSR actions with firm performance.