Does it make a difference when internalized? Exploring different CSR approaches predicting firm competitiveness

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Drawing upon signaling and organizational commitment theories, this study clusters unobtrusive corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors from the commitment and compliance dimensions to different CSR approaches, and examine how these approaches predict firm competitiveness using secondary data from Chinese public companies. It contributes to the CSR literature by providing empirical evidence that internalized CSR contributes to increasing firm competitiveness. It also contributes to the literature on firm competitiveness by identifying three aspects of core competence — financial, technological and dynamic capabilities — and their corresponding correlations with firm competitiveness, thus integrating both the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability perspective. The negative correlation discovered between dynamic capability and firm competitiveness challenges the views of the literature and indicates the existence of additional facets and potential boundaries of dynamic capability in the context of strongly collective cultures, such as China.

Keywords: CSR Approaches, Competitiveness, Core Competence, Financial Capacity, Technological Capacity, Dynamic Capability

JEL Classification: M10, M14, L21

Received: 03.04.2023
Accepted: 25.04.2023

How to cite: Sun, T. (2023). Does it make a difference when internalized? Exploring different CSR approaches predicting firm competitiveness. In M. Tutino, V. Santolamazza, & A. Kostyuk (Eds.), New outlooks for the scholarly research in corporate governance (pp. 31–37). Virtus Interpress. https://doi.org/10.22495/nosrcgp6