Value of corporate social responsibility for multiple stakeholders and social impact – Relationship marketing perspective

Abstract

Despite extensive corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature most of research has examined corporate performance as its only outcome. We aim to fill this gap by assessing companies' perceptions of their CSR activities’ benefits for society and specific stakeholders. We discuss societal trends such as diversity and inclusion embedded in employee-focused CSR conceptualization as a prerequisite for the perception of CSR’s societal impact. We bring together CSR and relationship marketing theories to test a conceptual model on a sample of 411 business-to-business (B2B) companies. The results confirm a positive relationship between employee-oriented CSR and the perceived usefulness of CSR actions for society, customers and employees (but not suppliers). In order to maximize relationship quality, CSR activities should be targeted at specific stakeholders (customers and employees) and not at society at large. Finally, differences are observed between SMEs and large B2B firms with opposite perceptions of antecedents and outcomes of relationship quality.