Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Theories: A Thematic Review, Synthesis of Literature and New Research Agenda (original) (raw)

2020, The International Journal of Business and Management

Introduction Globally, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an evolving concept and complex, without a clear and agreed-on definition, meaning different things to different culture or people (Chikwe, 2012). It encapsulates a whole broad area, involving corporate commitments, ethical conducts, legal considerations, socioeconomic imperatives, philanthropic gestures, operational environment imperatives and the likes. However, CSR describes a set of corporate obligations and practices somewhere in the spectrum between traditional charitable giving and meeting up socioeconomic demands and environmental sustainability on one hand, and merely strict compliance with laws on the other. CSR as a management concept is also variously viewed as a concept that covers a wide variety of business and environmental issues relating to plant location and technicalities, employee relations, socioeconomic concerns, human rights, ethics, corporate-community relations and environment (Enahoro, Akiuyemi and Olutoye, 2013). CSR can also be described as the variety of interactive issues revolving around business organization and society or community environment where the corporations operate. Relatedly, Surdyk (2006) succinctly expressed that, while the CSR operating definition remain elusive, the term CSR generally refers to a company's efforts to explicitly include social and environmental concerns in its decision-making along with a commitment to increasing the organization's positive impact on society. As similarly posited, CSR enhances the building of social welfare beyond profitability, as well as developing loyalty and corporate reputation, and at the end serves as a building block for competitive advantage (Arvidson, 2010; Ormiston and Wong, 2013). The mindset of classical CSR revolves around Milton Friedman's conception and theory that what corporation owe society is only efficient economic responsibility, while governments owe the social ends (Arvidson, 2010; Freedman and Dmytriyev, 2017). In relation to our present CSR study direction, a theory can be viewed as an explanation of some phenomena (e.g., corporate social responsibility imperatives), and it consists of principles that state relationships observed in association with that phenomenon (Blaylock, 1971; Hodge, Anthony and Gales, 1998). A theory is a way of thinking, perceiving and analyzing organizations' phenomena. Theory belongs to the family of words that include, guess, speculation, supposition, conjecture, proposition, hypothesis, conception, explanation and model (Weick, 2005, in Smith and Hitt, 2005). A theory in general guides and provides knowledge base and understanding of the basic relationships derivable from various knowledge-based disciplines. In brief, theory guides practices. Theory emanates from a Greek word, theoria,which means, viewing or contemplating. Theory deals with a contemplative body of ideas; a sort of rational kind of abstract, generalizing