How can Firms from Emerging Economies Enhance their CSR-Supported Export Strategies?

Abstract

The broadly divided literature on the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and performance has distracted researchers from intricate inter-relationships that may hide behind straightforward direct effects. Drawing on the strategy tripod, our study addresses this gap by investigating how internal resources, markets and institutions influence a CSR-supported export strategy, which we conceptualise as a differentiation strategy consisting of firm- and product-level CSR reputation and the performance-relevant international market orientation (IMO). Using a sample of 195 Brazilian export companies, we find that in conjunction with internal R&D resources, market-based and institutional pressures seem to directly affect product-level reputational CSR, whereas the latter two only indirectly influence firm-level reputational CSR resources and IMO. Our study contributes to the CSR, resource-based and international business literatures by conceptually refining strategic CSR, distinguishing between firm- and product-level CSR reputation, by investigating how firms develop the underlying resources of their CSR strategies and by covering diverse target-country institutional drivers.