Marketing and corporate social responsibility and agenda for future research

What is it about?

The very meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has transformed, from an interesting ideology to a realistic necessity for modern business. Along with this transformation, CSR has moved to the top of various research agendas (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams, Siegel, & Wright, 2006; Pearce & Doh, 2005), prompted debates about whether “doing good [is] the right thing to do, but…also leads to doing better” (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004, p. 9), and led to manifold publications in both books and journals (e.g., Dunphy, Griffiths, & Benn, 2003; Kotler & Lee, 2005; issue 1 of California Management Review 2004; issue 1 of Journal of Management Studies 2006). If organizations thus face demands that they define their roles and impacts and apply ethical, legal, social, responsible standards to their activities (Lichtenstein, Drumwright, & Braig, 2004; Lindgreen & Swaen, 2004), this outcome seemingly is a direct result of how CSR has developed, reflecting different scholars’ applications of various theories to understand it, from agency and institutional theory to the resource-based view of the firm to stakeholder and stewardship theory (for a review, see McWilliams, Van Fleet, & Cory, 2002; also see Carroll, 1979; Wartick & Cochran, 1985; Windsor, 2006). Yet such broad expectations of CSR also encompass different, underdeveloped conceptualizations of the topic (Pinkston & Carroll, 1994; Snider, Hill, & Martin, 2003), such that a lack of clear proscriptions for how to adopt CSR not only prevents practitioners from adopting it but also limits researchers from advancing theoretical insights into CSR. Noting the unresolved issues that remain, this special issue collects a selection of novel, cutting-edge theories and research on marketing and corporate social responsibility.

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