Can CEOs’ Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation Improve Firms’ Cooperation in International Scenarios?

Ángela González-Moreno, Pablo Ruiz-Palomino and Francisco J. Sáez-Martínez
Additional contact information
Ángela González-Moreno: Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain
Francisco J. Sáez-Martínez: Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 24, 1-14

Abstract: This paper intends to analyze the role of the chief executive officer’s (CEO) Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation (CSRO) on interfirm cooperation. Interfirm cooperation is central to gaining competitiveness, particularly in international scenarios where firms must deal with uncertain challenges. Nonetheless, the current understanding of its key determinants needs further development. We argue that whereas environmental hostility pushes firms to cooperate for self-interested purposes, CEOs’ CSRO pulls towards cooperation as an end in itself, even more so under hostile conditions where the need for good-willed committed partners is higher. In a sample of 124 internationalized Spanish firms, we found that CEOs’ CSRO alone increases firms’ international interfirm cooperation and that this impact is stronger under hostile international environments. Our findings thus highlight the importance of leading firms in a socially responsible direction to boost their interfirm cooperation levels in international scenarios.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility orientation; environmental hostility; interfirm cooperation; internationalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/6936/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/6936/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:24:p:6936-:d:294543

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().