Corporate social responsibility, increasingly framed through environmental, social and governance practices, remains under-integrated within corporate taxation. This article analyses the two-way interplay between responsibility norms and the legal regulation of tax avoidance. It argues that responsibility is neither wholly extra-legal nor purely voluntary, while tax law alone is constrained by definitional indeterminacy, limits of legal design and enforcement, structural arbitrage opportunities, business lobbying and weaknesses in public accountability. Responsibility norms can strengthen tax governance and transparency; legal rules can, in turn, discipline responsibility initiatives through disclosure and accountability. Their interaction provides a more credible framework for constraining aggressive avoidance and strengthening corporate accountability in taxation.

Social innovation promises to deliver social goods more effectively and find new solutions to endemic problems. However, the concept is ambiguous and becoming fuzzier; it is not clear what actors are doing—or how or why—when they engage in social innovation. As a starting point for overcoming the fragmentation and definitional contestation in social innovation research, this article examines the practice of social innovation by one of the most important actors in the domain: philanthropic foundations. Analyzing the social innovation activities of Canadian foundations reveals that foundations find the term “social innovation” vague and struggle to identify specific actions that it prescribes. Yet, fundamentally, all foundations view social innovation as “the purposeful actualization of novelty in a social setting.” This article then introduces social innovation tools (tools) and social innovation strategies as devices for understanding the practice of social innovation.

This paper examines the relationship between perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) and intention to leave the organization through a cross-cultural comparison between France and Morocco. It also explores the roles of CSR sensitivity and CSR information sharing as antecedents, and of person-organization fit (PO-fit) as a mediator of the relationship under study. Two cross-sectional samples were collected: French (n = 243) and Moroccan (n = 234). Invariance and structural equation modeling path analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized model. Results reveal partial scalar (mean) invariance across the measurement scales, indicating similar structures between France and Morocco. Path analyses support the proposed model and highlight differences between the samples. A negative relationship between perceived CSR and intention to leave the organization is mediated by PO-fit. This cross-cultural study advances micro-CSR by integrating CSR sensitivity and CSR information sharing into a unified model of their joint and distinct effects on perceived CSR, PO-fit, and turnover, extending signaling theory by positioning sensitivity as a boundary condition. Findings showed that organizations must adopt practices that align with the country’s cultural reality. Nevertheless, cross-cultural training is essential for multinational organizations operating in France and Morocco. However, the survey was not multilevel or longitudinal, which limits the ability to generalize the results to other countries. This study highlights the mediating role of PO-fit in the relationship between CSR perception and turnover intention, determined by CSR sensitivity and information sharing. It offers a new direction to research on micro-CSR and its cross-cultural dimensions.

The question of fair profits has been asked ever since modern finance has emerged. During the Middle Ages, it relates to the question of usury and the critical distinction between business profit-sharing and exploitative financial gains. With modern economies and the advent of classical economic theories in the 19th century, usury was claimed to be a virtuous sin which eventually (and supposedly) profits both sinners and society. More recently, this position was reframed and reshaped through shareholder value and shareholder primacy, which uphold the allegiance of business and society to financial investors active on unfettered transnational financial markets. The North-Atlantic financial crisis of 2007–08 exposed this alleged ‘end of history for corporate law’, reopening an evergreen debate on finance and society. In this context, my contribution provides a theoretical analysis of the notion of business profits, addressing the overarching accounting instruments that the law – comprising public and private arrangements, legal rules and social norms – puts in place to define and control for those corporate profits. My analysis is organised in two parts. The first part addresses two ideal types of financial accounting design contrasting: (i) an accounting system that purports to assess shareholder wealth through a fair value accounting model; (ii) another accounting system that purports to determine satisfying corporate profits through a historical cost accounting model. The second part discusses implications for corporate fairness and sustainability according to this dualistic approach which contrasts maximising (shareholder) value and satisfying profit-sharing, the former being framed by an unsustainable multiplicative process, while the latter by a sustainable additive one. This theoretical analysis aims to shed (some) light on the functional definition of business profits and its implications for corporate management and redistributive justice. It further highlights limits and shortcomings of resource valuation and net profit determination as suitable instruments to address matters of corporate sustainability and social responsibility.

With rising environmental awareness, public attention has become an important external force shaping corporate green behaviour. Using Baidu search data to measure public green attention (PGA), this paper examines its impact on green technological innovation (GTI) among 1543 Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2022. Employing a high-dimensional fixed-effects model, we find that PGA significantly promotes GTI, and the conclusion holds under alternative specifications. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is stronger in firms and regions with more favourable conditions. Mechanism analysis indicates that PGA stimulates GTI mainly by strengthening environmental regulation, enhancing corporate social responsibility and reducing agency costs. Further analysis reveals that PGA-induced GTI leads to better Environmental, Social and Governance performance, lower business risk and improved operational outcomes. Overall, the results highlight the important role of public attention in advancing corporate green innovation and sustainability.

The change in political leadership in the UK in 2010 has created financial uncertainty and instability for many third sector organisations. In a shifting funding landscape, it is clear that an over-reliance on Government funding is a risky strategy and that there is a need to diversify and seek out alternative sources of revenue. This article considers the impact of political change on the financial sustainability of community sports trusts associated with Premier League and Football League clubs in England. It explores sources of revenue through the analysis of financial statements, revealing that on average community sports trusts receive a significant proportion of income from grant funding whilst sponsorship income is relatively small. The article goes on to discuss the potential for community sports trusts to diversify revenue streams by developing social partnerships that address the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas of commercial organisations. It illustrates that although commercial sponsorship can provide benefits including the provision of additional funding that can enable financial stability, key issues include the balance of power, the impact on organisational flexibility, whether there is a need to restructure, and the development of long-term partnerships. Although the findings from this article are focused on a particular type of charity, given the importance of CSR partnership income for the charities sector they may also have broader implications for other charitable organisations.

Drawing on attribution theory and expectancy violations theory, this paper examines the relevance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the nonprofit domain. For this task, an analysis of the effects of positive and negative CSR performance on perceived trustworthiness was conducted for nonprofit and for for-profit organizations. The findings of a survey-based experiment indicate that in the nonprofit domain, positive CSR performance does not significantly affect trustworthiness, whereas negative CSR performance significantly destroys trustworthiness. Since negative CSR performance is the result of irresponsible behavior, the study’s findings suggest that CSR in the nonprofit domain should be centered on “avoiding bad.”

Growth in businesses affects economic development. Over the last decade, the people looking for business opportunities, either establishing an enterprise or contracting franchise business, are also found impressed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) and voluntarism. This paper is aimed to critically analyze the literature on international entrepreneurship and franchising. Based on the analysis, this paper develops propositions related to differences and similarities between the two concepts. It uses the exploratory method to compare the entrepreneurship and franchising, across the national borders. Taking the international view, an association in the approaches can be benefited from this paper which highlights the key areas that can be useful for investment decisions of prospective investors. Theoretically, this paper contributes to strengthening the need to consider the tradeoff between inputs and outputs of both ways of investments and conceptualize innovative entrepreneurship with a CSR perspective.

Observers have noted that organizations in all sectors, whether business, nonprofit, or government, have been moving toward rationalized structures that presuppose and express empowered organizational actorhood. We draw upon neo-institutional theory in this paper to extend the argument: The arrival of organizational actorhood has precipitated a concomitant, cross-sectoral movement toward organizational social responsibility. Whereas existing research has tended to theorize the social responsibilities of businesses, we develop a pyramid conceptual schema to array the social responsibilities of nonprofits. We then document the coevolution of organizational actorhood and responsibility across both sectors with a metastudy of nearly 200 extant surveys. We chart the institutionalization of a slate of formal structures that express organizational actorhood (i.e., mission statements, vision statements, and strategic plans) and that profess and define organizational social responsibilities (i.e., core values, ethics codes, and responsibility communications). We close with implications and future directions for organizational studies and research on corporate social responsibility.

Increasingly, traditional notions of philanthropy are colonized by a market discourse that promotes consumption as an effective way to solve social ills, resulting in what scholars have termed “marketized philanthropy.” This paper examines the implications of marketized philanthropy through a discourse analysis of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign benefiting the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa through consumption of (RED)-branded products. This paper explores the implications of a business-oriented model of philanthropy for bringing about social change, the repercussions of campaigns like (RED) that explicitly shed the label of philanthropy; and how they impact political engagement.

Effective programmes introduced by NGOs in developing countries have the potential to benefit a large number of people if they are scaled up, but instances of successful scaling-up are relatively rare. This paper uses a case study of an Indian educational NGO that has scaled up rapidly and effectively in order to explore the reasons for choice of scaling-up strategy, the particular barriers to scaling-up in the education sector, and how these barriers can be overcome. It finds that, while a high-functioning NGO can successfully overcome many of the internal organisational challenges posed by scaling-up, external barriers such as the difficulty of building relationships with key stakeholders like government officials and school teachers pose significant challenges. While these difficulties could in principle be mitigated by moving from an expansion-based to collaboration-based model of scaling-up, low accountability and governance of the NGO sector make it difficult to detect the quality of potential partners. The case also shows that India’s recent law mandating CSR has increased funding availability for scaling-up, but its requirement for corporate donors to preferentially support local projects has also created some challenges by constraining NGO ability to harness economies of scale during scaling.

In contemporary societies an increasing number of social needs have to be financed by market activities. In this regard, scholars started to discuss whether ‘Social Innovation’, ‘Social Entrepreneurship’, ‘CSR’, ‘Social Enterprise’, ‘Enterprising Nonprofits’, and ‘Social Business’ are able to provide solutions for financially sustainable social services. Just how these so-called Hybrid Organizations balance the tension between social and economic issues still requires conceptualization. This paper introduces the following definition based on the literature on organizational identity, civil society, and marketized nonprofits: Hybrids are characterized by an organizational identity that systematically integrates civil society and markets, exchange communal solidarity for financial and non-financial resources, calculate the market value of communal solidarity, and trade this solidarity for financial and nonfinancial resources. In other words they “Create Functional Solidarity”. Criteria to empirically observe Hybrid Organizations are also introduced and compared to similar concepts. The paper concludes with an outline of a research agenda.