Scholars have long debated the definition of social entrepreneurship, but disagreement persists. Despite sustained efforts to craft a universal definition, social entrepreneurship has been characterized as an ʻessentially contested concept’. However, little is known about the root causes of this ongoing contestation. Therefore, we delve into the literature's social entrepreneurship definitions to examine this complex […]

The relationship between nonfinancial reporting and real sustainable change within and beyondorganizations is fraught with complication. Furthermore, all facets of the relationship have notbeen examined equally. The contributions of this special issue made substantive progress inthis regard and draw our focus to several remaining complications—in particular, the societalimpacts of nonfinancial reporting. With this introduction, we […]

As climate change, social inequities, and other critical issues grow ever more urgent, many companies have built dedicated departments focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR). But while this is an important first step, the authors’ new research suggests that organizations with the most mature CSR programs are often actually those with the smallest CSR departments. […]

In this commentary, we engage with the study by Carney, El Ghoul, Guedhami, Lu and Wang, titled ‘‘Political corporate social responsibility: The role of deliberative capacity.’’ Their study provides empirical support for earlier claims that deliberative capacity – the capacity of political institutions to enable diverse stakeholders to collectively assemble and voice their opinions – […]

Research on the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has revealed the critical role of CSR departments vis-à-vis functional departments. While both CSR and functional departments influence CSR implementation, the question of how they work together remains underexamined. We address this question by mobilizing and merging two complementary yet separate perspectives on CSR implementation: “coordination” […]

Research applying institutional theory to corporate social responsibility (CSR) has experienced remarkable momentum. Institutional theory-based CSR research illustrates the role of values in guiding both agentic choices for CSR and the influence of institutional structures on CSR agency. Although values have been explored in this literature, systematic studies of values that seek to gain insights […]