Differentiated CSR: Standing apart from the CSR crowd.

Abstract

With Corporate Social Responsibility’s (CSR) widespread proliferation comes the risk of its own redundancy as managers emulate perceived best practice CSR campaigns. This paper offers a theoretical conceptualization for how CSR activity can contribute to a firm’s social reputation when industry CSR initiatives are homogenous. It proposes that by differentiating the firm’s CSR actions from the CSR among firms intra-industry, focal firms can distinguish themselves from their CSR rivals. The conceptual model presented proposes that the enactment of a specific CSR type (e.g., differentiated CSR) when derived from resource endowments and embedded within a firm’s core strategy, may increase CSP and improve social reputation.