Abstract
Although in recent decades corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been subjected to numerous studies in management and marketing literature about its impact on business results, the mechanism by which it affects performance has not been established. There is a lack of consensus when it comes to explaining how CSR actions are related to firm performance. Our research helps to understand this relationship through mediating effects such as CSR-oriented human resource management and customer satisfaction because employees and customers are critical stakeholders of companies and contribute directly to the determination of the corporate results. Through a study on a sample of small and medium-sized Spanish food and beverage manufacturing companies, and by using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), we found that CSR does indeed impact business performance when CSR actions are mainly oriented towards more efficient management of human resources and customer satisfaction. In this way, the results lead us to conclude that depending on the stakeholder to which these actions are oriented, a specific orientation of the company’s CSR policy can be more efficient in corporate performance.
Highlights
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is considered crucial for business success [1]and a strategic business necessity in order to achieve competitive advantage [2,3]
The academic community has highlighted the lack of studies promoting CSR practices and have demanded more research in this area, especially from SMEs. With this purpose in mind, we have considered it necessary to examine whether there is a relationship between CSR activities and business performance and to study if this relationship could be mediated by other factors, such as good human resource management [20,21] or customer satisfaction [22,23], through the incorporation of CSR
The literature shows as CSR activities in the firm oriented to human resources management and the perception that employees have about CSR is considered a positive influence on their attitudes and behaviors, that it leads to worker satisfaction [27,28,29]
Summary
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is considered crucial for business success [1]. This research provides a contribution to management literature by considering the CSR as a key business performance tool in SMESs in the food and beverage manufacturer sector, through the analysis of the relationship between CSR practices and performance, and by incorporating the mediating effects of human resource management and customer satisfaction. The inclusion of these two mediating effects seeks to draw the inconclusive results concerning the effect of CSR on firm performance in the research [35].
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