TY - JOUR
T1 - Competition-motivated corporate social responsibility
AU - Kemper, Jan
AU - Schilke, Oliver
AU - Reimann, Martin
AU - Wang, Xuyi
AU - Brettel, Malte
PY - 2013/10
Y1 - 2013/10
N2 - Despite corporate social responsibility (CSR) having become a key strategy for firms to use in advancing on a sustainable path, the role of CSR for firm performance outcomes remains poorly understood. Thus, in a large empirical study across several industries and countries, we examined CSR as moderator of the relationship between marketing capabilities and firm performance. Our study also follows prior research that calls for an inclusion of competitive intensity as a boundary condition to this moderation effect. As hypothesized, three-way interactions among competitive intensity, CSR, and marketing capabilities had significant relationships with firm performance. For firms in industries with high competitive intensity, marketing capabilities have a stronger positive impact on performance when CSR is high versus low. This research sheds light on the interplay between CSR and marketing by showing that vigorously competing firms should use CSR as a major lever for increasing the impact of marketing on performance.
AB - Despite corporate social responsibility (CSR) having become a key strategy for firms to use in advancing on a sustainable path, the role of CSR for firm performance outcomes remains poorly understood. Thus, in a large empirical study across several industries and countries, we examined CSR as moderator of the relationship between marketing capabilities and firm performance. Our study also follows prior research that calls for an inclusion of competitive intensity as a boundary condition to this moderation effect. As hypothesized, three-way interactions among competitive intensity, CSR, and marketing capabilities had significant relationships with firm performance. For firms in industries with high competitive intensity, marketing capabilities have a stronger positive impact on performance when CSR is high versus low. This research sheds light on the interplay between CSR and marketing by showing that vigorously competing firms should use CSR as a major lever for increasing the impact of marketing on performance.
KW - Corporate social responsibility
KW - Firm performance
KW - Organizational capabilities
KW - Three-way interaction
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.02.018
DO - 10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.02.018
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84878647121
VL - 66
SP - 1954
EP - 1963
JO - Journal of Business Research
JF - Journal of Business Research
SN - 0148-2963
IS - 10
ER -