What type of CSR engagement suits my firm best? Evidence from an abductively-derived typology

Why do firms engage in socially responsible activities? Prior discussion around this issue mainly applies a uniform conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or focuses on distinct CSR activities. These perspectives are surprising given that firms respond to expectations of social responsibility through unique and often multifaceted sets of voluntary behaviors. To address the limitations of these perspectives, this study first develops a novel typology of divergent repertoires of CSR activities that reveal different constellations of CSR engagement. We, then, follow a novel analytical strategy which specifies complex interdependencies among different CEO-, firm-, and contextual-specific characteristics and reveals the causal pathways that explain alternative CSR constellations. The findings confirm that the actual multiple effects of each characteristic on CSR engagement are not only contingent on the combinations of additional characteristics that synergistically occur in a given causal recipe but also on the unique CSR constellation under consideration in specific contexts.