Drivers of corporate environmental and social responsibility practices: A comparison of two moderated mediation models

Abstract

This paper adds to CSR, environmental management and strategy literature by examining motivating and enabling factors of corporate environmental and social responsibility practices. We develop and compare two moderated mediation models – one related to the environmental (Study 1) and the other to the social (Study 2) dimension of sustainability. Survey-based data collected from 236 companies in Study 1 and 219 companies in Study 2 along with data on firm financial health from an external source are used. In both models, the moral motives of “doing the right thing” have stronger effects on environmental/social responsibility strategy, which then acts as an important mediator for translating those motives into specific environmental/social practices. Moreover, financial health negatively moderates the strategy–practices relationship in the environmental model, while its moderation role is not significant in the social model, suggesting that sustainability practices are not necessarily limited to financially healthy firms. Our research casts fresh light on the (N)RBV and stakeholder theories, proposing their integration when discussing corporate environmental/social sustainability models.