Institutions and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

We provide an overview of how existing research has approached the linkage between CSR and institutions. In particular, we lay out how the three major forms of institutionalism have approached CSR, what kinds of institutions and levels of analysis have been used, and how this has been linked to various domains of CSR. Based on this overview, we derive implications for research and directions how work at the intersection of CSR and institutions might advance. Specifically, it seems to us that the field should stop viewing institutional conformity as CSR and instead apply insights from comparative institutional analysis to voluntary (“explicit”) forms of CSR, leverage configurational methods, and explore the co-evolution of CSR and institutional norms.