The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review of Concepts, Research and Practice
Abstract
In this review, the primary subject is the ‘business case’ for corporate social responsibility (CSR). The business case refers to the underlying arguments or rationales supporting or documenting why the business community should accept and advance the CSR ‘cause’. The business case is concerned with the primary question: What do the business community and organizations get out of CSR? That is, how do they benefit tangibly from engaging in CSR policies, activities and practices? The business case refers to the bottom‐line financial and other reasons for businesses pursuing CSR strategies and policies. In developing this business case, the paper first provides some historical background and perspective. In addition, it provides a brief discussion of the evolving understandings of CSR and some of the long‐established, traditional arguments that have been made both for and against the idea of business assuming any responsibility to society beyond profit‐seeking and maximizing its own financial well‐being. Finally, the paper addresses the business case in more detail. The goal is to describe and summarize what the business case means and to review some of the concepts, research and practice that have come to characterize this developing idea.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches
Suchman, M. C. (1995) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/258788 · Cited by 19,903
The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
Friedman, M. (2007) · Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance · doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_14 · Cited by 11,529
A Three-Dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Performance
Carroll, A. B. (1979) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/257850 · Cited by 10,480
Self-citationCorporate Social and Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Orlitzky, M., Schmidt, F. L., & Rynes, S. L. (2003) · Organization Studies · doi:10.1177/0170840603024003910 · Cited by 7,641
How corporate social responsibility is defined: an analysis of 37 definitions
Dahlsrud, A. (2008) · Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management · doi:10.1002/csr.132 · Cited by 4,092 · cited 4×
“A recent Google search of CSR definitions, for example, revealed that the definitions most often found in articles and web pages have been set out by organizations such as BSR, the Commission of the European Communities and CSRwire (Dahlsrud 2006).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialCause marketing: a new direction in the marketing of corporate responsibility
Smith, S. M., & Alcorn, D. S. (1991) · Journal of Consumer Marketing · doi:10.1108/07363769110035054 · Cited by 265
Cited by
A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes
Bocken, N. M. P., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2014) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.11.039 · Cited by 4,366
Stahl, G. K., Brewster, C. J., Collings, D. G., & Hajro, A. (2020) · Human Resource Management Review · doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100708 · Cited by 502
Business cases for sustainability: a stakeholder theory perspective
Schaltegger, S., Hörisch, J., & Freeman, R. E. (2019) · Organization & Environment · doi:10.1177/1086026617722882 · Cited by 477
Homburg, C., Stierl, M., & Bornemann, T. (2013) · Journal of Marketing · doi:10.1509/jm.12.0089 · Cited by 427
Beyond Good Intentions: Designing CSR Initiatives for Greater Social Impact
Barnett, M. L., Henriques, I., & Husted, B. W. (2020) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/0149206319900539 · Cited by 358
Busch, T., & Friede, G. (2018) · Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management · doi:10.1002/csr.1480 · Cited by 345
Can corporate social responsibility protect firm value during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Qiu, S. (., Jiang, J., Liu, X., Chen, M.-H., & Yuan, X. (2021) · International Journal of Hospitality Management · doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102759 · Cited by 321
Shen, J., Dumont, J., & Deng, X. (2018) · Group & Organization Management · doi:10.1177/1059601116664610 · Cited by 251
RetractedAschemann-Witzel, J., de Hooge, I. E., Rohm, H., Normann, A., Bossle, M. B., Grønhøj, A., & Oostindjer, M. (2017) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.173 · Cited by 240
Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review of Current Concepts, Research, and Issues
Carroll, A. B., & Brown, J. A. (2018) · Corporate Social Responsibility · doi:10.1108/s2514-175920180000002002 · Cited by 224
Self-citationAdvancing the Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from Leading European Banks
Avrampou, A., Skouloudis, A., Iliopoulos, G., & Khan, N. (2019) · Sustainable Development · doi:10.1002/sd.1938 · Cited by 222
Transcending transmission: Towards a constitutive perspective on CSR communication
Schoeneborn, D., & Trittin, H. (2013) · Corporate Communications: An International Journal · doi:10.1108/13563281311319481 · Cited by 170
Theory Assessment and Agenda Setting in Political CSR: A Critical Theory Perspective
Scherer, A. G. (2018) · International Journal of Management Reviews · doi:10.1111/ijmr.12137 · Cited by 149
Mueller Loose, S., & Remaud, H. (2013) · British Food Journal · doi:10.1108/00070701311289920 · Cited by 129
International business research and risky investments, an analysis of FDI in conflict zones
Driffield, N., Jones, C., & Crotty, J. (2013) · International Business Review · doi:10.1016/j.ibusrev.2012.03.001 · Cited by 115
Asiaei, K., Bontis, N., Barani, O., & Jusoh, R. (2021) · Journal of Management Control · doi:10.1007/s00187-021-00317-4 · Cited by 91
Sustainability accounting in action: lights and shadows in the Italian context
Passetti, E., Cinquini, L., Marelli, A., & Tenucci, A. (2014) · The British Accounting Review · doi:10.1016/j.bar.2014.05.002 · Cited by 66
Alnamrouti, A., Rjoub, H., & Ozgit, H. (2022) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su14127327 · Cited by 62
Water sustainability of investors: Development and application of an assessment framework
Hogeboom, R. J., Kamphuis, I., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2018) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.142 · Cited by 46
Etse, D., McMurray, A., & Muenjohn, N. (2022) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-021-04752-0 · Cited by 43
E-HR and international HRM: a critical perspective on the discursive framing of e-HR
Francis, H., Parkes, C., & Reddington, M. (2014) · The International Journal of Human Resource Management · doi:10.1080/09585192.2013.870309 · Cited by 40
Lin, W. L., Lee, C., & Law, S. H. (2021) · Business Strategy and the Environment · doi:10.1002/bse.2662 · Cited by 30
Açikgöz, F. Y., Kayakuş, M., Zăbavă, B.-Ș., & Kabas, O. (2024) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su16229681 · Cited by 25
BP's solar business model: a case study on BP's solar business case and its drivers
Freund, F. L. (2014) · International Journal of Business Environment · doi:10.1504/ijbe.2014.063775 · Cited by 20
The Transformative Impact of Ai On Csr, Esg, and Sustainability: Critical Review and Case Studies
Ozkan, B. (2024) · International Finance Review · doi:10.1108/s1569-376720240000023012 · Cited by 16
“Harm or Good?”: Consumer Perceptions of Corporate Strategic Giving in Schools
Aitken, R., & Watkins, L. (2017) · Journal of Consumer Affairs · doi:10.1111/joca.12124 · Cited by 15
Ethical values in social economy for sustainable development
Rincon‐Roldan, F., & Lopez‐Cabrales, A. (2021) · Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics · doi:10.1111/apce.12300 · Cited by 11
From greenwashing to green trust: Understanding the consumer behavior in the fashion industry
Zhao, J., Zhou, H., Zhou, M., Zheng, C., Zhou, L., & Yang, F. (2026) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106850
Metadata
- Authors
- Carroll, A. B., & Shabana, K. M.
- Venue
- International Journal of Management Reviews
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2010-01-15
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 85-105
- ISSN
- 1460-8545 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2370
- OpenAlex
- W1971354656
- Cited by
- 3,919
- References
- 6
- FWCI
- 304.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
