Corporate Social Performance
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 July 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 July 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846740-0099
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 July 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 July 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846740-0099
Introduction
Corporate social performance (CSP) refers to the principles, practices, and outcomes of businesses’ relationships with people, organizations, institutions, communities, societies, and the earth, in terms of the deliberate actions of businesses toward these stakeholders as well as the unintended externalities of business activity. The development of the CSP concept, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, is important for understanding how CSP is related to other core topics and concepts in business and society/business ethics. As the CSP concept was refined, an earlier term, corporate social responsibility (CSR), was incorporated as one element of CSP, in particular, the ethical and/or structural principles of social responsibility, or business engagement with others. Research attention was also eventually given to business processes for implementing (or avoiding) social responsibility and responding to stakeholder issues and then to the impacts and outcomes of CSP-related behaviors. Thus, over time, researchers included the “why (principles), what and how (processes), and what happened (outcomes)” of CSP. Of necessity, any bibliography on corporate social performance will be integrated with works on related subjects, including corporate social responsibility and responsiveness, stakeholder theory, business ethics, corporate political action, issues management, and sustainability. The reader will find some references to these topics herein, although detailed bibliographic information on them is beyond the scope of this article. The CSP sections are organized in two ways: first is a topical organization, including conceptual development, operationalization, stakeholder relations (employees, suppliers, others), CSP and financial performance, corporate social reporting, and CSP approaches with general audience appeal (plus sections on general references, journals, and textbooks). Second, within the topics, readers will see a chronological order to the research cited. Because CSP is a relatively new area of study, this chronology-within-topic approach helps the reader to see how the field has developed from rudimentary “shoulds” to sophisticated conceptual and empirical research.
History and Conceptual Development of CSP
In the earliest 20th-century iterations of the concept, CSP (then, social responsibility) was largely thought of as a kind of noblesse oblige, an obligation of powerful corporations to “give back”; thus, charitable giving and community service were the principal operational definitions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the academic study of business and society relationships began in earnest. During these years of social turmoil, the emphasis shifted from “giving back” to limiting or eliminating the negative consequences of business activities as well as using the vast resources of business to solve compelling social problems such as racism, poverty, and urban decay. The 1980s and 1990s saw a consolidation of theoretical positions (both descriptive and normative) on CSP, as well as a more definitive exposition of its relationships with corporate financial performance. In the 21st century, recent theory and research has shown that the concept of CSP is dynamic, multidimensional, and still worthy of scholarly and practitioner attention. The intellectual roots of CSP are quite deep, spanning history, philosophy, legal studies, economics, social science, and more. Readers who are interested in learning more about these roots are encouraged to study the references in the CSP works cited in these subsections. The subsection Overview Articles and Books contains several up-to-date summaries of CSP’s conceptual development. Decade-based subsections, beginning with Early Conceptual Development of CSP, 1950s–1960s, note key developments in conceptualizing CSP.
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Article
- Abusive Supervision
- Adverse Impact and Equal Employment Opportunity Analytics
- Alliance Portfolios
- Alternative Work Arrangements
- Applied Political Risk Analysis
- Approaches to Social Responsibility
- Assessment Centers: Theory, Practice and Research
- Attitudes
- Attributions
- Authentic Leadership
- Automation
- Bayesian Statistics
- Behavior, Organizational
- Behavioral Approach to Leadership
- Behavioral Theory of the Firm
- Benefits
- Between Organizations, Social Networks in and
- Brokerage in Networks
- Business and Human Rights
- Business Ethics
- Career Studies
- Career Transitions and Job Mobility
- Certified B Corporations and Benefit Corporations
- Charismatic and Innovative Team Leadership By and For Mill...
- Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
- Compensation, Rewards, Remuneration
- Competitive Dynamics
- Competitive Heterogeneity
- Competitive Intensity
- Computational Modeling
- Conditional Reasoning
- Conflict Management
- Considerate Leadership
- Cooperation-Competition (Coopetition)
- Corporate Philanthropy
- Corporate Social Performance
- Corporate Venture Capital
- Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
- Creativity
- Cross-Cultural Communication
- Cross-Cultural Management
- Cultural Intelligence
- Culture, Organization
- Data Analytic Methods
- Decision Making
- Diversity
- Diversity and Firm Performance
- Diversity and Inclusion, Global Perspective on
- Dynamic Capabilities
- Emotional Labor
- Employee Aging
- Employee Engagement
- Employee Ownership
- Employee Voice
- Empowerment, Psychological
- Entrepreneurial Firms
- Entrepreneurial Orientation
- Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship, Corporate
- Entrepreneurship, Women’s
- Equal Employment Opportunity
- Ethics
- Evaluation, Expatriate Selection and
- Executive Succession
- Faking in Personnel Selection
- Family Business, Managing
- Feedback
- Financial Markets in Organization Theory and Economic Soci...
- Findings, Reporting Research
- Firm Bribery
- First-Mover Advantage
- Fit, Person-Environment
- Forecasting
- Founding Teams
- Global Leadership
- Global Talent Management
- Goal Setting
- Grounded Theory
- Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions
- Human Capital Resource Pipelines
- Human Resource Management
- Human Resource Management, Strategic
- Human Resources, Global
- Human Rights
- Humanitarian Work Psychology
- Humility in Management
- Impression Management at Work
- Imprinting
- Influence Strategies/Tactics in the Workplace
- Information Economics
- Innovative Behavior
- Intelligence, Emotional
- International Economic Development and SMEs
- International Economic Systems
- International Strategic Alliances
- Job Analysis and Competency Modeling
- Job Crafting
- Job Design
- Job Satisfaction
- Judgment and Decision Making in Teams
- Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration within and across Firm...
- Leader-Member Exchange
- Leadership Development
- Leadership Development and Organizational Change, Coaching...
- Leadership, Ethical
- Leadership, Global and Comparative
- Leadership, Strategic
- Learning by Doing in Organizational Activities
- Licensing
- Management History
- Management In Antiquity
- Managerial and Organizational Cognition
- Managerial Discretion
- Meaningful Work
- Mentoring
- Multinational Corporations and Emerging Markets
- Multiteam Systems
- Neo-institutional Theory
- Neuroscience, Organizational
- New Ventures
- Organization Design, Global
- Organization Development and Change
- Organization Research, Ethnography in
- Organization Theory
- Organizational Adaptation
- Organizational Ambidexterity
- Organizational Behavior, Emotions in
- Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs)
- Organizational Climate
- Organizational Control
- Organizational Corruption
- Organizational Hybridity
- Organizational Identity
- Organizational Justice
- Organizational Legitimacy
- Organizational Networks
- Organizational Paradox
- Organizational Performance, Personality Theory and
- Organizational Responsibility
- Organizational Surveys, Driving Change Through
- Organizations, Big Data in
- Organizations, Gender in
- Organizations, Identity Work in
- Organizations, Political Ideology in
- Organizations, Social Identity Processes in
- Overqualification
- Passion
- Paternalistic Leadership
- Pay for Skills, Knowledge, and Competencies
- People Analytics
- Performance Appraisal
- Performance Feedback Theory
- Planning And Goal Setting
- Proactive Work Behavior
- Psychological Contracts
- Psychological Safety
- Real Options Theory
- Recruitment
- Regional Entrepreneurship
- Reputation, Organizational Image and
- Research, Ethics in
- Research, Longitudinal
- Research Methods
- Research Methods, Qualitative
- Resource Redeployment
- Resource-Dependence Theory
- Resources
- Response Surface Analysis, Polynomial Regression and
- Role of Time in Organizational Studies
- Safety, Work Place
- Selection
- Selection, Applicant Reactions to
- Self-Determination Theory for Work Motivation
- Self-Efficacy
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy In Management
- Self-Management and Personal Agency
- Sensemaking in and around Organizations
- Service Management
- Shared Team Leadership
- Social Cognitive Theory
- Social Evaluation: Status and Reputation
- Social Movement Theory
- Social Ties and Network Structure
- Socialization
- Spin-Outs
- Sports Settings in Management Research
- Stakeholder Theory, Transaction Cost Economics and
- Stakeholders
- Status in Organizations
- Strategic Alliances
- Strategic Human Capital
- Strategy
- Strategy and Cognition
- Strategy Implementation
- Stress
- Structural Contingency Theory/Information Processing Theor...
- Team Composition
- Team Conflict
- Team Design Characteristics
- Team Emergent States Team Emergent States
- Team Learning
- Team Mental Models
- Team Newcomers
- Team Performance
- Team Processes
- Teams, Global
- Technology and Innovation Management
- Technology, Organizational Assessment and
- the Workplace, Millennials in
- Theory X and Theory Y
- Time and Motion Studies
- Training and Development
- Training Evaluation
- Trust in Organizational Contexts
- Turnover
- Unobtrusive Measures
- Validity
- Virtual Teams
- Whistle-Blowing
- Work and Family: An Organizational Science Overview
- Work Contexts, Nonverbal Communication in
- Work, Mindfulness at
- Workplace Aggression and Violence
- Workplace Coaching
- Workplace Commitment
- Workplace Gossip
- Workplace Meetings
- Workplace, Spiritual Leadership in the
- World War II, Management Research during