Integrating Corporate Social Responsibility with Business Strategy

The relationship between the corporation and its broader society has been an issue for executives since the advent of the modern corporation. Scholars in the field of business and society have made the case for long that the firm has dual purposes—to be economically successful and to be socially responsible. CSR has been traditionally viewed by many companies as charitable activities not fundamental to business sense and hence they have not actively promoted it. With ever increasing public awareness and information technology revolution, companies are faced with greater demands for detailed information regarding the social and environmental impacts of their business activities. CSR-related research has been dominated by studies in the context of western developed countries such as Europe, the USA, and Australia. Only a few studies have appliedCSR to developing countries like India. Recent research also suggests that an integrated approach to CSR is largely missing in both theory and practice. This research gap provides a good opportunity to explore the field and come up with some new insights. In the current research we propose to explore and conceptualize how CSR-based strategy plays a vital role in a company gaining competitive advantage. The study also intends to explore some of the emerging trends in the domain of CSR. The research also looks at some real life examples (related to company practices in the domain of CSR) to support the arguments. The research is based on the secondary data in the form of existing literature on the subject. Research articles are collected from the databases like EBSCO, JSTOR, EMERALD, SAGE, PROQUEST, etc. and analysed to build up the theoretical constructs and arguments in a systematic manner. Some real life examples related to practices of various organizations with regard to implementation of CSR are also collected through the research articles, relevant sources available on internet, company websites, newspapers, business magazines, etc. The research would lead to some pertinent outcomes which would help business firms to create differentiation among competing market forces and help them develop effective strategies for CSR