The Effect of Market and Nonmarket Competition on Firm and Industry Corporate Social Responsibility
“Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility” Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 38: 313-337
40 Pages Posted: 18 Jan 2014 Last revised: 10 Jun 2020
Date Written: November 11, 2018
Abstract
We contribute to the emerging literature on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its antecedents by undertaking a systematic analysis of the effect of rivalry on firm and industry CSR. We deal with the codetermination of competition and CSR by using instrumental variables in the firm-level analysis and by modeling it directly in the industry-level analysis. We find that higher intensity of rivalry and CSR of competitors increase firm CSR, ceteris paribus; however, in a more dynamic setting when firms can change their production output, more competition in fact decreases aggregate industry CSR. While seemingly contradictory, these findings suggest interesting implications for both managers and public policy makers.
Keywords: strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR), market structure, competition, social performance, simulation
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