An empirical study on the link between corporate social responsibility and innovation in environmentally sensitive industries

Abstract

Managers' perceptions on the evolution of a company's environment can have important implications for strategic decisions on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and innovation, especially in industries which are sensitive to social and environmental issues. This paper follows knowledge-based and stakeholder management perspectives to state that in such industries high levels of environmental dynamism will motivate firms to engage in CSR activities to support proactive innovation strategies for faster development of new technologies. We use a sample of 86 Spanish and Portuguese firms from the renewable energy sector to test a structural equations model of relationships between environmental dynamism, innovation strategy and CSR through a partial least squares (PLS) statistical approach. The results of the study suggest that highly dynamic environments encourage firms to be more innovation proactive, and that this proactivity relates to a high CSR commitment, with process innovation capabilities being preferred as a technological source for firms in this sector.