Why corporate social responsibility should be recognized as an integral stream of international corporate governance

Abstract

This paper reviews the existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the field of international corporate governance (ICG) and suggests specific lines of potential integration of existing theory and research on topics such as green finance, sustainability, and bottom-of-the-pyramid studies. The approach began with an extensive review of the literature in ICG culminating in a review by Aguilera et al. (2019) in which three streams of ICG research were identified. Examples of existing elements of CSR were subsumed in these dimensions, and an argument was made for more integration. CSR was not an important part of international business theory and research in the early days of the field. However, sufficient research exists now in CSR and of CSR topics in the field of international business to justify that CSR should be recognized as an important stream in ICG. This integration would be beneficial since calling attention to the development of theory and research and data availability in CSR can inform international business (IB) and ICG researchers and enable them to tackle previously under-researched issues from other disciplines and areas of the world.

Keywords

• corporate social responsibility (csr)
• corporate governance
• grand challenges
• green finance
• international business
• international corporate governance (icg)
• sustainability
• wicked problems