Original Research
The Relationship of Corporate Social
Responsibility and Firm Performance: A
Bibliometric Overview
SAGE Open
January-March 2023: 1–14
Ó The Author(s) 2023
DOI: 10.1177/21582440231158021
journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo
Deepa Sharma1 , Suman Chakraborty1 , Ashwath Ananda Rao1,
and Lumen Shawn Lobo1
Abstract
Corporate social responsibility and its relationship with firm performance have been the focus of studies concerning the area
of social responsibility of companies over the last four decades. The area has undergone significant progressions and shifts
over time. There is a tremendous interest among the researchers in analyzing the relationship between corporate social
responsibility and firm performance, as evident by the increasing surge in the research publications in this domain, especially
since 2010. This study intends to highlight the knowledge expansion and research dispersion in the broad area concerning
corporate social responsibility and its effect on firm performance. For this purpose, the research articles published in the
Scopus database from 1987 to 2021, covering 34 years, have been taken to perform a bibliometric analysis. The study explains
the descriptive trend of research publications focusing on performance indicators and uses a thematic evolution tool to highlight the major themes. The results of the bibliometric studies reveal that the focus of research encompasses the dimensions
of sustainability, strategic management, institutional pressures, disclosure, and corporate social responsibility reporting. Based
on these dimensions, the paper presents insights into the existing studies and offers the scope for future research.
Keywords
corporate social responsibility, firm performance, financial performance, Biblioshiny, bibliometric analysis
Introduction
The mission to establish the impact of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) on a firm’s performance in the literature has been the focus of many past research studies
(Orlitzky et al., 2003; Waddock & Graves, 1997).
Exploring and analyzing the effect of corporations being
socially responsible on their performance have been
explained using various theoretical and conceptual
underpinnings. The discussions on the relationship
between CSR and firm performance started in the 1980s
and 1990s when scholars were still interested in defining
what constitutes CSR and who the company should be
responsible for. These discussions continued in the 21st
century and are relevant to the interest of researchers in
this area. The query ‘‘does it pays to do well’’ led the
studies to inquire about the relationship between CSR
and firm performance. The research studies on the theme’
business case of CSR’ focus on what bottom-line tangible
benefits companies get from being responsible.
Responsive to the different stakeholders’ expectations
leads to positive reciprocities (Jones, 1995). Theories such
as stakeholder theory, resource-based view, and legitimacy theories have tried to explain the different reasons
or mechanisms through which social responsibility leads
to improved performance of firms. Some studies explore
the said relationship in different contexts and use other
proxies of social responsibility and firm performance
(Bodhanwala & Bodhanwala, 2018; Maqbool & Zameer,
2018; Mishra & Suar, 2010; Orlitzky et al., 2003;
Pradhan, 2016). There have been attempts to measure
the direction of this relationship (Maqbool & Zameer,
2018; Waddock & Graves, 1997) and to solve various
methodological issues and conceptual operationalization
1
Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Karnataka, India
Corresponding Author:
Suman Chakraborty, Associate Professor, Department of Commerce,
Manipal Academy of Higher Education, 9th Block, MIT campus, Manipal, KA
576104, India.
Email: suman.chakraborty@manipal.edu
Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2
of the different constructs measuring corporate social
responsibility and firm performance (McWilliams &
Siegel, 2000). The recent studies relating to CSR and
Financial performance have given a negative (Jyoti &
Khanna, 2021; Sekhon & Kathuria, 2019), positive (Bag
& Omrane, 2022; Cordeiro et al., 2021), and mixed
(Jaisinghani & Sekhon, 2022; Oware & Mallikarjunappa,
2022) relationship. Researchers have attributed these
inconsistencies to the incongruity of stakeholders, lapses
in theoretical foundations, conceptual factors of CSR,
methodological differences, and functional deviations in
the measurement aspect of CSR and financial performance (Lu et al., 2014; H. Wang et al., 2016; Q. Wang
et al., 2016).
Even after decades of research in the business case of
CSR, incongruence exists in the conclusions about the
effect of CSR on firm performance. This study appoints
a bibliometric analysis to look back and analyze past
and present positions and highlight future studies in the
business case of CSR. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the studies on the effect of corporate social responsibility on a firm’s performance to
evaluate the present position and developing trend in the
publication from 1987 to 2021 through a bibliometric
analysis. The data has been retrieved from Scopus and
Biblioshiny software of R, and VOS viewer is used for
the bibliometric analysis. The focus of the study is to (i)
conduct a descriptive analysis of research trends and
publication output, (ii) evaluate the most cited documents and authors, (iii) construct a country collaboration network, (iv) explore and analyze the keywords
through keyword co-occurrence network, and thematic
evolution, and (v) create and analyze a co-citation network of references. This paper is organized as follows:
the second section presents a literature review that discusses the critical studies that have led to the development of the field. The third section explains the data and
methodology, followed by the results of the bibliometric
analysis. The fifth section provides concluding remarks
and discusses the significant findings, succeeded by
future research directions.
Theoretical Background
CSR and Its Impact on Firm’s Performance
The discussions about corporate social responsibility as
the subject of strategic planning and the foundation of
business ethics came around with the book by Bowen
(2013) initially printed in 1953. Since then, shifts have
come in the general direction of studies focusing on CSR.
The business case of CSR relates to deliberations on the
motives, pressures, drivers, and short-term and long-term
benefits of socially responsible behavior of business organizations (Aggarwal & Jha, 2019; Vishwanathan et al.,
SAGE Open
2020). The research studies relating to Business’ responsibility toward society have been necessitated as a response
to Friedman (2017), who stated that the business’s sole
objective is to increase profits in a New York Times article published in 1970. This was further challenged by
Freeman (1994), who was the proponent of stakeholder
theory which states that businesses need to focus on satisfying stakeholders for their long-term survival and
growth. Carroll (1991) defined corporate social responsibility in the form of a pyramid that captures four duties a
business has toward its society: economic, philanthropic,
legal, and ethical, confirming that companies have some
responsibility toward society as substantiated in her further research works (Carroll & Shabana, 2010).
Over time, different theories have been developed
which congruously explain the concept of the business
case of CSR and the context within which fulfilling societal responsibilities affect a business organization. The
stakeholder theory elucidates the responsibility of businesses toward multiple stakeholders (Freeman, 1994),
and institutional theory discusses the different pressure
organizations face, which motivates their sustainable
behavior (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott et al., 2004).
Barney’s (1991) resource-based view posits that being
responsible provides a unique advantage for firms which
gives a distinct competitive advantage to companies. The
instrumental stakeholder theory has been developed by
combining stakeholder, economic, and theories from
ethics and behavioral science (Jones, 1995). The basic
tenet of this theory is that the firms operate through their
managers who contract with various stakeholders based
on mutual trust and cooperation. The business case of
CSR has also been popularized by the works of Porter
(1991) and Porter and Kramer (2002), where the shared
vision concept of strategic CSR has been explained. With
the development of these theories and studies that have
been empirically tested (McWilliams & Siegel, 2000;
Mishra & Suar, 2010; Orlitzky et al., 2003; Waddock &
Graves, 1997), the effect of CSR on firm performance
has given new avenues of research in the field.
Bibliometric Analysis in CSR Research
The bibliometric research studies in corporate social
responsibility have gained momentum in recent years.
This section describes such studies in CSR research that
have been done using bibliometric analysis. A bibliometric analysis enlightens researchers with a broad view
of the documents published in any domain, including
their trend and general direction of research studies. The
earliest known bibliometric study on corporate social
responsibility research was conducted by (De Bakker
et al., 2005), who analyzed 30 years of CSR-corporate
social responsibility theory and research. Since then,
Sharma et al.
there has been a steady rise in bibliometric studies encapsulating various sub-fields of CSR research, with the
highest number of articles published in 2020 and 2021.
The bibliometric studies have focused on ‘‘CSR and sustainability’’ (Du et al., 2021; Meseguer-Sánchez et al.,
2021; Nunhes et al., 2020; Secinaro et al., 2021), ‘‘CSR
and communication research’’ (Ji et al., 2020; Verk et al.,
2021), ‘‘trend of specific journal publication in CSR’’
(Kumar et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2021), ‘‘employee centered CSR’’ (Santana et al., 2020), and ‘‘gender/board
diversity and CSR’’ (Amorelli & Garcı́a-Sánchez, 2021;
Sánchez-Teba et al., 2021). The bibliometric studies have
also focused on ‘‘CSR trends and research in Small and
Medium Enterprises’’ (Guillén et al., 2022; MaldonadoErazo et al., 2020), ‘‘supply chain management and
CSR’’ (Modak et al., 2020), ‘‘CSR and share price’’
(Raza et al., 2021), ‘‘evolution of CSR’’ (Ferramosca &
Verona, 2020), and ‘‘CSR in marketing and consumer
behavior’’ (Nova-Reyes et al., 2020).
The previously published literature has exemplified
the review studies and seminal research papers on the
meaning and definitions (Carroll, 1979, 1991, 2016;
Dahlsrud, 2008) and theories of CSR (Barney, 1991;
Freeman, 1994; Friedman, 2017; Jones, 1995; Scott
et al., 2004). There are review studies that have analyzed
the business case of CSR by explaining the underlying
mechanisms and studying the effect of a company’s
social responsibility on a firm’s performance (Aguinis &
Glavas, 2012; McWilliams & Siegel, 2000; Orlitzky et al.,
2003; Vishwanathan et al., 2020). The surge of these bibliometric studies in recent times, especially in business
research, can be attributed to their ability to handle significant volumes of data and deliver research effects
(Donthu et al., 2021). A preliminary review of the abovementioned bibliometric studies reveals a need for this
paper to perform a comprehensive bibliometric review
on the effect of CSR on the performance of firms.
3
For the analysis, the data period selected is from 1987
to 2021, comprising 34 years, which aligns with the inception of the empirical work using the relevant keywords.
A preliminary search using the key search terms yielded
2072 articles. The selected articles were limited to subject
area as Business management and accounting. Articles,
edited book chapters, conference proceedings, and
reviews were selected, and source type was restricted to
Journal, conference proceeding, and book. The language
was English, and only published articles were taken for
the study, which ultimately yielded 1244 articles.
Tools for Analysis
The data has been analyzed in the present study using
VOS Viewer and Biblioshiny software. The Biblioshiny
is a shiny app that gives a web interface for Bibliometrix,
an open-source R package that provides an elaborate
bibliometric analysis (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). The
VOS Viewer is an app that presents a graphical representation of network maps and can display extensive bibliometric data in maps in a very user-friendly and easy-toanalyze manner (Van Eck & Waltman, 2011).
All analyses have been done using Biblioshiny except
the country collaboration network and keyword cooccurrence network, which have been drawn using VOS
viewer.
Results
Basic Information About the Data Analyzed
The period of the study is 34 years, from 1987 to 2021.
Within this period, 1,244 documents were found, including 1,086 articles, 52 book chapters, 54 conference
papers, and 52 review papers. The search yielded 2,498
authors’ keywords, and the total number of authors was
2,713.
Data and Methodology
Annual Scientific Production and Research Trend
Source of Data and Search Terms
The analysis of the trend of the annual scientific production of 1,244 documents used in the study shows that the
number of articles before 2004 is relatively low, averaging
only three per year. Significant growth in published papers
occurred in 2009 and 2015, when the publications averaged
55 and 115, respectively, with the highest in 2020, equalling
171. The growth in Figure 1 shows an increasing interest
in authors in this field, especially in recent years.
For the study, data and information is extracted from
the Scopus database and analyzed using Biblioshiny and
VOS viewer. In this study, documents extracted from
Scopus database have been used, one of the world’s most
extensive abstract and citation databases in terms of coverage and journal range (Falagas et al., 2008). Four keywords are used to extract relevant information on the
broad area of corporate social responsibility: CSR OR
Corporate Social Responsibility AND Firm performance
OR financial performance. The database in Scopus is
dynamic and gets updated at frequent intervals. Because
of this, information was exported on 27th October 2021.
Documents With the Most Citations and Impact
Factor
This section discusses the most relevant or productive
sources of articles. Out of the 1244 documents published
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SAGE Open
Table 2. Most Impactful Sources as per H Index.
Name of the source
Journal of Business Ethics
Corporate Social Responsibility and
Environmental Management
Journal of Cleaner Production
Business Strategy and the Environment
Social Responsibility Journal
Strategic Management Journal
International Journal of Hospitality
Management
Business and Society
Management Decision
Corporate Governance
Figure 1. Annual scientific production.
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Table 1. Most Relevant Sources as per the Number of Articles.
Sources
Journal of Business Ethics
Corporate Social Responsibility
and Environmental Management
Social Responsibility Journal
Journal of Cleaner Production
Business Strategy and the Environment
Corporate Ownership and Control
Strategic Management Journal
Journal of Business Research
Management Decision
Sustainability Accounting Management
and Policy Journal
H index
Articles
% of articles
110
68
22.4
13.8
52
46
36
21
20
15
15
13
10.6
9.3
7.3
4.3
4.1
3.0
3.0
2.6
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
in 438 journals, the top 10 most productive sources are
shown in Table 1. The top journals per publication are
the Journal of business ethics (22.4%), followed by
Corporate social responsibility and environmental management (13.8). The impact of journals is in terms of the
H index, which measures the Journal’s number of articles
(h) that have received at least h citations. So, the most
impactful journals in terms of H index are ‘‘The Journal
of Business Ethics’’ as shown in Table 2.
The most cited article, the one with the highest local as
well as global citation, is by (Orlitzky et al., 2003) titled
‘‘Corporate Social and Financial Performance: A MetaAnalysis’’ from ‘‘Organization Studies,’’ where the
authors provided a rigorous review based on 52 studies of
the effect of social performance on financial performance.
By evaluating the themes of the top 10 most cited documents as given in Table 3, the articles mainly focused on
the nature of CSR on CFP, review studies on the relationship, and theories explaining the said relationship.
Authors and Affiliations
This section describes the details of the authors and their
impact. Out of the 2,713 authors that have authored
57
27
23
18
17
16
11
10
10
8
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Table 3. Documents Having Maximum Citations-Biblioshiny
Using Scopus Database.
Document
Local
Global
Year citations citations
Orlitzky M, 2003, Organ Stud
Waddock SA, 1997, Strategic Manage J
Mcwilliams A, 2001, Acad Manage Rev
Mcwilliams A, 2000, Strategic Manage J
Surroca J, 2010, Strategic Manage J
Barnett ML, 2007, Acad Manage Rev
Barnett ML, 2006, Strategic Manage J
Brammer S, 2008, Strategic Manage J
Barnett ML, 2012, Strategic Manage J
Kim Y, 2012, Account Rev
2003
1997
2001
2000
2010
2007
2006
2008
2012
2012
383
365
246
234
119
93
92
80
69
67
3,532
3,144
3,209
1,776
911
891
587
574
444
629
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
1,244 documents, 203 are single-authored documents,
with authors per document averaging 2.31. The most
productive authors are Seoki Lee with 12 and GarcaSnchez IM with 10 papers. The top 10 most productive
authors, their local citations, and their impact by H index
is shown in Table 4. Seoki Lee had the highest H index
of 11.
Most Relevant Affiliations and Active Countries
This section focuses on the most relevant affiliations for
the documents selected for the study. Out of 1483 institutions that have published data on CSR and its effect on
firm performance, the top 10 most affiliated institutions
have been studied. The University of Zaragoza has produced the most articles (16), followed by The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University (15), as shown in Table 5.
The most productive country, as given in Table 6, is the
USA, with 468 documents, followed by China (237). The
USA excels in the total production of articles, and there
Sharma et al.
5
Table 4. Top 20 Author Production, Author Impact by H Index,
and the Number of Citations.
Table 6. Most Productive Countries.
Region
Author
Lee S
Garca-Snchez IM
Moneva JM
Martnez-Ferrero J
Cho CH
Ortas E
Rodrguez-Ariza L
Chau KW
Cheng TCE
Gangi F
H index
Author
Local citations
11
8
7
6
5
5
5
4
4
4
Apospori E
Carrigan M
Jones R
Laguir I
Magrizos S
Stekelorum R
Laguir L
Staglian R
Liu X
Pekovic S
383
383
383
383
383
383
365
365
246
246
USA
China
Spain
UK
Australia
India
Italy
Canada
France
Indonesia
Frequency
468
237
189
183
119
93
92
80
77
77
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Table 5. Top 10 Most Relevant Affiliations and Their Country.
Affiliations
University of Zaragoza
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Universidad De Salamanca
Copenhagen Business School
Santa Clara University
York University
Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Deakin University
Griffith University
Universidad Carlos III De Madrid
Articles
Country
16
15
10
9
9
9
8
8
8
8
Spain
Hong Kong
Spain
Denmark
United States
Canada
Romania
Australia
Australia
Spain
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
is a considerable difference of almost 50 % between the
articles produced in the USA and China.
Country Collaboration Network
A country collaboration network gives a perspective on
whether research in a given area is clustered or is representative of the different countries in the world (Donthu
et al., 2021). The country collaboration network is shown
in Figure 2. The network shows that the highest link
strength is of the United States, with more than 4 lakh
links. The network is divided into five clusters where
cluster 1 shows the link between the world’s developed
countries, with US having the highest link strength.
Cluster 2 shows the link between the developing countries of the world with the highest link of India, and cluster 3 includes the links between the East Asian countries,
with China having the highest link strength.
Keyword Analysis and Thematic Evolution
The keywords have been analyzed in this section by
studying the most frequently appearing keywords and
keyword co-occurrence network. The thematic evolution
has been shown by using thematic maps. The keywords
co-occurrence network is drawn using VOS Viewer, and
Biblioshiny has been used for showing thematic evolution. The keywords discovered in the literature survey
are used to draw a vocabulary picture of a particular
field of study (Feng et al., 2017). A total of 2498 keywords were discovered in this study as authors’ keywords
from 1244 articles, out of which 995 were categorized as
Keyword Plus (ID), which is generated from the title of
references that an author has cited and is considered
more descriptive than author keywords (Zhang et al.,
2016). Apart from corporate social responsibility and
firm or financial performance, the most occurring keywords are finance, sustainable development, economic
and social effects, social aspects, stakeholder, environmental management, industry, and corporate strategy
showing the focus of studies in these areas in Table 7.
Keyword co-occurrence analysis aims to probe into
the co-occurring nature of keywords in the given publications (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). The nodes in the network represent keywords, the node’s size indicates the
occurrence of the keyword, and the line showing the link
between the nodes shows the co-occurrence between the
keywords. The width of the line indicates the number of
times the keywords co-occur together. The color denotes
a thematic cluster where the nodes and links are used to
describe the cluster’s description of themes and the relationships between them. As shown in Figure 3, a keyword co-occurrence network reveals that 12 clusters have
been formed. The keywords with the highest link
strength, clusters, and cluster themes, along with the
cluster color, are shown in Table 8. The most prominent
cluster with more than 10 keywords and their links have
been identified as Cluster 1 with environmental performance as the most prominent theme, cluster 2 with ‘‘performance,’’ cluster 3 with ‘‘corporate governance,’’
cluster 4 labeled with ‘‘corporate social performance,’’
cluster 5 with ‘‘business ethics,’’ and cluster 6 with
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SAGE Open
Figure 2. Country collaboration network.
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Table 7. Frequently Occurring Keywords.
Words
Corporate social responsibilities (CSR)
Finance
Sustainable development
Economic and social effects
financial performance
Corporate social responsibility
Corporate financial performance
Social aspects
Stakeholder
Sustainability
Corporate social performance
Environmental management
Industry
Social responsibilities
Corporate strategy
Planning
Stakeholder theory
Investments
Commerce
Information management
Occurrences
98
70
68
65
56
53
24
24
23
21
20
18
18
17
16
16
16
15
14
14
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
‘‘corporate social responsibility.’’ The top five keywords
with the highest co-occurrence strength are ‘‘corporate
social responsibility,’’ ‘‘financial performance,’’ ‘‘corporate governance,’’ and ‘‘CSR and sustainability.’’
Thematic Evolution
A thematic evolution analysis is performed using
Biblioshiny to identify how different themes in the
literature have evolved over time by dividing the time
period from 1987 to 2021 into two time slices. The period
selected was 1987 to 2014, 2015 to 20, and 2021. A total
of 310 keywords were studied with a minimum cluster
size of 5.
A thematic map has four quadrants based on the
impact and centrality of themes. The motors themes
(upper right) are well developed and are the most critical themes in the analyzed studies, the niche themes(upper left) include isolated and peripheral themes.
The basic or transversal themes are essential but not
well developed in the literature, and emerging or
declining themes in the lower left quadrant are poorly
advanced (Cobo et al., 2011). The quadrants for each
period are shown in Figure 4a to c. As per their
importance in highlighting the essential and emerging
themes, motor and transversal themes have been highlighted below.
Motor themes: the analysis of motor themes from
1987 to 2014 shows that the central focus of studies is
related to stakeholders concerning intangible resources
of the firm like reputation, image, and the resourcebased theory, which explains that CSR is an intangible
resource of the firm which affects its value. Other
themes were related to customers like customer loyalty,
perceived value, etc. The studies have been focused on
the banking sector, and India and Brazil have emerged
as significant themes Figure 4a. The period from 2015
to 2020 included CSR and financial performance clusters focusing on supply chain management. Disclosure
is one significant thematic cluster concentrating on
financial and non-financial reporting, global reporting
initiatives, etc. The studies have increasingly focused
Sharma et al.
7
Figure 3. Keyword co-occurrence network of author’s keywords.
Source. VOS viewer using Scopus database
Table 8. Keyword Co-occurrences and Clusters Identified and Divided as per citation strength.
Clusters
Total keyword
under each cluster
Keyword with strongest
link strength within the cluster
Cluster theme
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
24
22
17
14
12
11
9
9
9
6
5
3
Environment performance
Performance
Corporate governance
Corporate social performance
Business ethics
Corporate social responsibility
Financial performance
Stakeholder theory
Sustainability
Socially responsible investment
ESG
Institutional theory
Disclosure and reporting of CSR
Banks, environment, and efficiency
Corporate governance and firm value
Business case of CSR, competitive advantage
Stakeholder-customer
CSR-financial and non-financial performance, China, performance
CSR-financial performance meta-analysis, reputation
Agency theory, stakeholder theory, emerging markets
Corporate strategy and sustainability
Legitimacy
Firm performance indicators
Institutional pressures
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
on developing and emerging markets, mainly China,
India, and developed countries like Spain and have
analyzed different institutional pressures for corporates
to engage in CSR as institutional theory is one of the
essential themes Figure 4b. The latest studies (2021)
have focused on themes such as environment and theory of human self-motivation such as selfdetermination theory and disclosure of CSR by corporates. This line of studies indicates the present situation
related to Covid 19 pandemic Figure 4c.
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Figure 5. Co-citation network of references.
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
The recent transversal themes based on studies published in 2021 gave four thematic clusters. Financial performance is one of the clusters, with agency theory and
stakeholder theory as major sub-themes. Audit fees
emerged as a separate cluster, and corporate social performance was another cluster, including studies on
Environmental, Social Governance, and COVID-19 as
sub-themes within the cluster. The themes have been
highlighted in Figure 4c.
Reference Co-Citation
Figure 4. (a) Major themes from 1987 to 2014, (b) major themes
from 2015 to 2020, and (c) major themes for the year 2021.
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Transversal themes: this reflects the important themes
but is not well developed in the literature. Figure 4a
identifies such themes concerning studies from 1987 to
2014 and thematic clusters such as CSR-financial performance, content analysis (reporting of CSR), ethical
investment, corporate strategy (mainly focused on the
developed countries like the USA and European countries) and governance (board of directors, ownership),
environmental performance and strategic management.
The 2015 to 2020 period showed the most critical thematic clusters such as corporate governance, including
gender diversity, agency theory, board independence,
and women directors. CSR and firm performance with
reputation, innovation, small and medium enterprises,
and competitive advantage is another cluster in
Figure 4b.
Reference co-citation is a method of science mapping that
postulates that the articles cited together most are linked
with each other thematically, exposing the intellectual
form of a field of study (Hjørland, 2013). This method
can help find clusters based on a theme from the citations
and can be helpful for studies to identify influential publications and foundational themes (Donthu et al., 2021).
Figure 5 shows the co-citation network of the articles
divided into four clusters separated by different colors.
The higher co-citation two articles receive greater will be
their co-citation strength. Table 9 shows the top 60 most
co-cited references. The betweenness and closeness centrality was calculated using the Biblioshiny app, which
measures a node (reference) to pass on information
between the nodes or groups and to carry information
effectively by being nearer to other nodes (references) in
the network, respectively. The betweenness and closeness
centrality measure of Orlitzky et al. (2003) is the highest
revealing the importance of this reference in the network,
followed by Freeman (1994), Waddock and Graves
(1997), Margolis and Walsh (2003), and McWilliams and
Sharma et al.
9
Table 9. Top Co-Cited References Separated by Cluster Color
and Centrality.
Node
Orlitzky M. 2003
Margolis J. D. 2003
Carroll A. B. 1979
Wood D. J. 1991
Luo X. 2006
Carroll A. B. 2010
Porter M. E. 2006
Carroll A. B. 1991
McWilliams A. 2006
Dahlsrud A. 2008
Sen S. 2001
Friedman M. 1970-1972
Bowen H. R. 1953
Garriga E. 2004
Freeman R. E. 1984
Waddock S. A. 1997
Friedman M. 1970-1971
McWilliams A. 2000
McGuire J. B. 1988
Cochran P. L. 1984
Aupperle K. E. 1985
Griffin J. J. 1997
Margolis J. D. 2001
Friedman M. 1962
Moskowitz M. 1972
Graves S. B. 1994
Ruf B. M. 2001
Roberts R. W. 1992
McWilliams A. 2001
Russo M. V. 1997
Barnett M. L. 2007
Campbell J. L. 2007
Barnett M. L. 2006
Brammer S. 2008
Surroca J. 2010
Barney J. 1991
Barnea A. 2010
Godfrey P. C. 2009
Jensen M. C. 1976
Johnson R. A. 1999
Cheng B. 2014
Hull C. E. 2008
Servaes H. 2013
Godfrey P. C. 2005
Barnett M. L. 2012
Kim Y. 2012
Donaldson T. 1995
Hillman A. J. 2001
Jones T. M. 1995
Turban D. B. 1997
Cluster
Betweenness
Closeness
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
104.5426
55.68367
8.61621
10.37407
8.479089
3.926261
2.552945
2.380737
5.956887
3.154052
3.882946
1.710374
0.51981
1.199546
62.25764
55.24683
27.98866
30.59694
21.9849
10.25224
12.582
8.319618
2.404672
1.1595
1.245196
2.16253
2.246542
0.442894
48.81455
10.85575
6.079294
4.595086
5.88177
8.125712
3.51258
2.608553
1.417828
2.894179
1.139109
3.682183
0.84452
3.966994
0.651555
2.682616
1.554728
0.221229
19.08383
13.21597
16.62006
6.248824
0.013889
0.013889
0.013333
0.013333
0.013514
0.012658
0.012346
0.012195
0.013333
0.0125
0.0125
0.011364
0.010526
0.011236
0.013889
0.013889
0.013699
0.013889
0.013889
0.013514
0.013333
0.013333
0.0125
0.01087
0.011364
0.011628
0.011905
0.010204
0.013158
0.012987
0.012658
0.012346
0.012658
0.012821
0.012346
0.012048
0.011111
0.012346
0.010753
0.012195
0.010989
0.012346
0.010753
0.011905
0.011494
0.01
0.013889
0.013514
0.013514
0.012821
Source. Biblioshiny using Scopus database.
Cluster colour: Cluster 1- Red, Cluster-2-Blue, cluster 3- Green, Cluster
4- Purple
Siegel (2001). The co-citation network in Figure 5 categorizes the references into four thematic clusters marked
by red, blue, green, and purple. By closely observing each
of these clusters, four themes can be identified for studies
related to ‘‘review and conceptualization of CSR,’’ ‘‘seminal studies on CSR and firm performance, different CSR
perspectives and theoretical underpinnings,’’ ‘‘definition
and concept of CSR,’’ and ‘‘CSR theory and strategic
implications.’’ Cluster 1, denoted by red color, consists of
articles that broadly focus on the review paper (Orlitzky
et al., 2003) and the definition and conceptualization of
CSR as a construct (Carroll, 1979). This cluster includes
articles on the various theoretical foundation which has
started the debate and discussion on the business case of
CSR (Friedman, 2017). Cluster 2 (blue) includes seminal
articles on the relationship between CSR and firm performance (McWilliams & Siegel, 2000) that established the
direction of the relationship between CSR and firm performance (Aupperle et al., 1985; Waddock & Graves,
1997). Cluster 3 (green) broadly focuses on what constitutes CSR (Barnett, 2007) and the different theoretical
underpinnings of the CSR construct (McWilliams &
Siegel, 2001; Russo & Fouts, 1997). It also has articles
that focus on different CSR perspectives from the point
of view of stakeholders (Servaes & Tamayo, 2013) and
related to CSR and risk management perspectives
(Godfrey et al., 2009). Cluster 4 (purple) includes studies
on the strategic importance of social responsibility of
companies focusing on the stakeholders (Hillman &
Keim, 2001)and the concept of social responsibility
mainly from the perspectives of stakeholders, especially
at the micro level of CSR (Turban & Greening, 1997).
These foundational themes have led to many research
studies in the related areas.
Discussion and Conclusion
The study of the relation between CSR and firm performance is attracting more focus from scholars, given the
surge of publications in the area in recent years. The bibliometric data for 1244 articles which studied the relationship were collected and analyzed with an elaborate
bibliometric analysis using Biblioshiny and VOS viewer.
Performance analysis was followed by science mapping
using network maps for keyword co-occurrence analysis,
thematic evolution, and reference co-citation.
After decades of research in corporate social responsibility and firm performance, researchers still have an
interest in exploring this relationship, as evident by the
increasing trend of publications in recent times. As per
the categorization done by Scopus, most articles in the
area of CSR have been in journals categorized under
business, management, and accounting. ‘‘Journal of
Business Ethics’’ is the most impactful Journal in the area
as per the H index and the total number of publications.
Most review papers and seminal research papers on the
relation between CSR and firm performance have
received maximum citations.
10
SAGE Open
The USA is the most active country in terms of publications, which exceeds by almost double the second most
active country, China. The University of Zaragoza in
Spain has the greatest number of affiliations. The collaboration network of nations has also been analyzed. The
USA has the highest link with other countries in terms of
collaboration. Regional collaborations between studies
are the most prominent, with the highest link strength of
China among the East Asian countries, and India has the
most links with other developing countries of the world.
Apart from the key search terms of the study, sustainability has been a critical research area within the studies
focused on CSR and firm performance, as evidenced by
keyword co-occurrence analysis. The other essential
themes highlighted are ‘‘corporate strategy,’’ ‘‘business
ethics,’’ ‘‘corporate governance,’’ and ‘‘environmental
performance.’’ A thematic evolution was done to show
the development of the most relevant themes over time
by dividing the period into two time slices. The emerging
themes were related to studies focusing on ‘‘corporate
governance,’’ ‘‘intangible resources,’’ ‘‘competitive advantage,’’ and ‘‘ESG.’’ An intellectual form of the field was
revealed by reference co-citation analysis. The essential
citations disclose three broad clusters in the study relating to the ‘‘review studies on CSR-CFP relation,’’ ‘‘CSR
theory,’’ ‘‘conceptual development of CSR,’’ and ‘‘corporate social performance.’’
3.
Future Research Directions
Thematic evolution maps as shown in the analysis has
divided the keywords into four clusters out of which the
basic or motor themes and transversal themes reflect the
most important which gives directions for future
studies.The authors have made some observations relating to the most important themes, which will have a
presence in future research articles related to the business
case of CSR, highlighted below.
1.
2.
Institutional theory has emerged as a motor or
basic theme according to the thematic evolution
analysis relating to the studies from 2015 to 2020,
mainly within the context of studies in developing
countries like China, India, and Spain. The focus
is on analyzing the institutional pressures faced
by corporate and how these pressures shape their
level of performance. This indicates the shift of
studies from Business-centric to society-centric
(Wickert, 2021) aspect of CSR, where the government has an important role.
Analysis of CSR disclosure and reporting has
also emerged as a central research theme in CSR
studies in recent times, as reflected by the keywords such as Global Reporting Initiatives(GRI)
4.
and disclosure as the motor themes identified in
the thematic evolution maps between 2015 and
2020. Financial and non-financial reporting, especially in adopting the international reporting
guidelines such as the ones given in the GRI
framework, aids in disseminating information to
stakeholders about the social performance of
firms. There is also an increasing interest in CSR
and communication scholars to study the frames
within which the CSR communication research
has been developed and analyzed and within
those frames reporting, and the relationship
between CSR and firm performance have been
identified as the two most prominent themes
(Ledwani et al., 2022; Verk et al., 2021)
CSR and business strategy have received scholars’
attention (McWilliams et al., 2006; Porter &
Kramer, 2002). These studies have focused on the
implications of intertwining the CSR strategy of a
company with corporate strategy. In this regard,
scholars have concentrated on the effect of the
strategic considerations toward framing CSR policy on a firm’s performance (Yu & Liang, 2020).
In the same context, CSR scholars have borrowed
theories such as the absorptive capacity perspective from strategic management literature (Tang
et al., 2012) to study how ‘‘how’’ engaging in CSR
leads to improved firm performance rather than
focusing on ‘‘why.’’ The strategy being a vital
motor and transversal theme identified between
2015 to 2021 reveals that there is still scope for
exploring how strategic considerations can play
an essential role in exploring the business case of
CSR in future research studies.
Most studies have focused on analyzing the direct
impact of CSR on the financial performance of
firms as disclosed by the most co-cited articles
identified in different clusters in the reference cocitation network, although it has been studied
that the effect is perhaps an indirect one
(Vishwanathan et al., 2020). In the articles examined in this review, ‘‘moderator’’ and ‘‘mediator’’
were added as additional search terms, yielding
42 articles indicating that in the business case of
CSR, there is more scope for analyzing mediators
and moderators influencing the relationship
between CSR and firm performance. Aguinis and
Glavas (2012) and Grewatsch and Kleindienst
(2017) revealed various underlying mechanisms in
the form of mediators and moderators that will
impact the said relationship. They also mainly
revealed that studies have focused on the organizational and institutional level of mediators and
moderators, leaving scope for individual analysis.
Sharma et al.
5.
The most researched mediator variables explain
only 20% of mediation effects leaving an area for
further investigation as found in a metaanalytical study (Vishwanathan et al., 2020). The
analysis of CSR and its impact on firm performance can be fully explored when these mechanisms which explain the said relationship are
explicitly studied.
The studies on CSR and the business case of
CSR have evolved to focus on the various themes
as disclosed in the present study. One such transition is seen in some recent studies that have used
themes such as self-determination theory (Nazir
et al., 2021), COVID 19 (Qiu et al., 2021), and
human self-motivation theory (Li et al., 2021)
also identified as transversal themes in thematic
evolution map of 2021. This indicates that future
CSR research will focus on analyzing the impact
of responsible practices on primary stakeholders
such as employees.
The present study has revealed some exciting findings
but is not free from shortcomings. The data and findings
relate to the data collected from Scopus only. Even
though it is the world’s largest citation database, taking
other databases like Web of Science and Google Scholar
can give a broader picture. The bibliometric analysis
mainly uses quantitative data to describe and interpret
the data, further qualitative analysis using content analysis or other tools may present an objective view. In addition to the data in bibliometric analysis, which uses
abstract, title, and keywords to perform the analysis,
taking full papers to narrow down specific trends may be
further valuable.
With the pandemic bringing a threat to many businesses’ survival, the CSR initiatives certainly will be refocused as well. The need to recreate shared values for
business and society will be essential. Companies must
be proactive in CSR engagement rather than reactive to
CSR pressures. The business’s response to CSR cannot
simply comply with a regulation or law but be more strategic in their approach to create a favorable impact for
society and business. In this context, the ‘‘business case
of CSR’’ will continue to be an important research area
in the future. In this regard, this study would be an illuminating pathway for academicians and researchers to
explore the area further to nurture a theoretical, empirical, and conceptual relationship between CSR and firm
performance.
Acknowledgment
The authors are thankful to Manipal Academy of Higher
Education for providing access to relevant databases.
11
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Approval
No experiment or testing done on human or animals.
ORCID iDs
Deepa Sharma
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9283-5141
Suman Chakraborty
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3999-7181
Lumen Shawn Lobo
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2627-6438
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