Walking the walk or talking the talk? Corporate social responsibility decoupling in emerging market multinationals

Abstract

Research shows that emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) increasingly use corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting as a global legitimation strategy. Less is known about when their CSR reporting is decoupled from their CSR performance. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, we argue that EM-MNEs’ CSR decoupling is shaped by their dual embeddedness in their home countries and the global institutional environment. We then examine how EM-MNEs’ home country institutional voids and degree of internationalization affect their tendency to engage in such decoupling. Our model receives partial support in a study of 93 MNEs from 15 emerging markets between 2005 and 2012.