Understanding CSR Behaviors across the Middle East: A Review and a Research Agenda

Abstract

Given its importance and peculiarities, research around corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Middle East (ME) has significantly grown over the last few decades. Yet, knowledge on this important topic remains fragmented and unorganized, especially with extant research assuming homogeneity of CSR practices across all Middle Eastern countries, disregarding critical economic, social and institutional factors that can be heterogenous across the ME regions. In this systematic literature review, we propose a novel nuanced excursion that aims to organize and classify antecedents, expressions and consequences of CSR across five sub-regional clusters in the ME. By reviewing 86 articles published from 1990 to 2015, we find that while some CSR challenges are common to the whole ME, others are more regional and some are sub-regional specific. Ultimately, we provide several future research themes that flow from an informed clustering system that takes into consideration salient socio-economic realities in the ME.