Corporate Social Responsibility: Where Does It Come from, and Where Does It Go? Evolution of the Conceptual Structure from 1975 to 2021

Mario A. Morales-Parragué (), Rodrigo A. Varela-Laso (), Luis Araya-Castillo and Fidel Molina-Luque
Additional contact information
Mario A. Morales-Parragué: Facultad de Economía, Gobierno y Comunicaciones, Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago 8320000, Chile
Rodrigo A. Varela-Laso: Facultad de Economía, Gobierno y Comunicaciones, Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago 8320000, Chile
Luis Araya-Castillo: Facultad de Ingeniería y Empresa, Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Santiago 8330225, Chile
Fidel Molina-Luque: Facultad de Educación, Psicología y Trabajo Social (GESEC-INDEST), Universidad de Lleida, 25001 Lleida, Spain

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: From the first discussions on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the 1950s to today, there is evidence of a ramification of concepts associated with CSR that produce a web of relationships that evolves in different directions. This paper analyses the conceptual structure of the CSR field, contributing to understanding its development and evolution between 1975 and 2021, opening a discussion of what these concept relationships might show in the understanding, development, and future application of CSR in business and society. For this purpose, networks of concepts were identified by using the SciMAT software on 6861 papers obtained from the WOS database in the Business and Management categories in the field of study. The results show that the field still appears to be far from understood and is very focused on the interests of companies. We offer and opportunity to rethink its purpose from a perspective that integrates other dimensions that concentrate on the society–business relationship. Based on these results, this study presents new research directions to explore both the drivers and results of the application of CSR.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; CSR; business and society; evolution; conceptual structure; SciMAT; science mapping approach; co-occurrence; board of directors; financial performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/5770/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/5770/ (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:15:y:2023:i:7:p:5770-:d:1107783

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 ().