Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic Implications

In recent years, scholars and managers have devoted greater attention to the strategic implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Consistent with McWilliams and Siegel (2001), we define CSR as situations where the firm goes beyond compliance and engages in ‘actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law’. However, this is just one interpretation of CSR. Numerous definitions of CSR have been proposed and often no clear definition is given, making theoretical development and measurement difficult. CSR activities have been posited to include incorporating social characteristics or features into products and manufacturing processes (e.g. aerosol products with no fluorocarbons or using environmentally-friendly technologies), adopting progressive human resource management practices (e.g. promoting employee empowerment), achieving higher levels of environmental performance through recycling and pollution abatement (e.g. adopting an aggresJournal of Management Studies 43:1 January 2006 0022-2380