Corporate Governance Meets Corporate Social Responsibility: Mapping the Interface

2020/11/26 by Rashid Zaman, Tanusree Jain, Georges Samara +1 · 407 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Categorization #Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting #Corporate governance #Corporate social responsibility #Economics #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Epistemology #Field (mathematics) #Function (biology) #Management #Management and Organizational Studies #Political science #Public relations #Sociology

paper · open access · doi:10.1177/0007650320973415

published in Business & Society 61(3), 690-752 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2020/11/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Despite ample research on corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus on the nature of the relationship between these two concepts and on how this relationship manifests across institutional contexts. Drawing on the national business systems approach, this article systematically reviews 218 research articles published over a 27-year period to map how CG–CSR research has evolved and progressed theoretically and methodologically across different institutional contexts. To shed light on the full gamut of the CG–CSR relationship, we categorize and explore the nature of this relationship along two strands: (a) CSR as a function of CG and (b) CG as a function of CSR. Through this review, we identify key themes where CG–CSR research has lagged and account for under-explored contexts in this domain. Finally, we put forth a comprehensive agenda for progressing future research in the field.

Citations

• Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic Implications*
• Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come
• Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research
• Socioemotional Wealth and Business Risks in Family-controlled Firms: Evidence from Spanish Olive Oil Mills
• The BRICS—merely a fable? Emerging power alliances in global trade governance
• New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research
• The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields

Cited by

• Effects of Family Ownership and Professionalization on Firms’ Financial Performance and Sustainability Reputation
• Do negative investor attitudes drive corporate social responsibility? Evidence from China
• Exploring The Role of Guanxi in CSR performance and Knowledge Management of a Stakeholder Network: A Case of iStone, China. [europepmc]
• The choice of corporate social responsibility strategies under rivalry: Whether to increase socially responsible product characteristics or enhance relationship with buyers. [europepmc]
• Revisiting the Governance-Dividend Nexus: The Mediating Role of Corporate Social Responsibility. [europepmc]

Related

• Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance: A cognitive approach
• The government of self-regulation: on the comparative dynamics of corporate social responsibility
• Corporate Social Responsibility and Governance: The Role of Executive Compensation
• A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility
• Corporate Social Responsibility