Complementarity between CSR dimensions and innovation: behaviour, objective or both?

This research assesses the impact of combining the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm innovation. In particular, we test whether the three dimensions of CSR (economic, social and environmental) are interrelated (behavioural complementarity), and whether their joined adoption will generate super-additive innovation performance effects (objective complementarity). To that end, we draw on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for Spain during the period 2009–2014. The analyses confirm behavioural complementarity among the three dimensions of CSR, as well as differences on objective complementarities depending on the innovation performance measure considered. In particular, the combination of the social dimension with any of the two others (economic and environmental) is the one that gives the best results in terms of radical innovation, whereas both the economic and environmental dimensions of CSR seem to be fundamental to foster incremental innovation. These results have implications for academics and practitioners, since they provide useful guidelines for the design of CSR in order to enhance firm innovation.