How Competing Institutional Logics Affect Corporate Social Responsibility Benefits: the Mediating Role of Paradox Mindset and Multi-Stakeholders

Organizations differ in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientation, the effects of which manifest themselves in organizational outcomes. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective, the current study explains the underlying dynamics of these differences. The current study aims at revealing how organizations can achieve combined CSR benefits for both society and business by exploring the ways of how social and commercial logic function differently in the context of CSR and shape organizations’ CSR together with some mediators. Based on the developed typology by the current study for CSR, a research model is created for the analysis. A survey was conducted with 192 companies operating in various sectors. The findings confirm the dichotomy, which is theoretically proposed by the developed typology of the current study between institutional logics and perceived CSR benefits: commercial logic mostly increases CSR benefits for business while social logic increases CSR benefits for society. Furthermore, the current study finds out that it is possible for commercial logic to provide CSR benefits for society and social logic to provide CSR benefits for business, thanks to some organizational capabilities that allow overcoming the complexity arising from the different organizational prescriptions of competing institutional logics. Thus, paradox mindset and multi-stakeholders can enable combined CSR benefits by mediating between incompatible structures of multiple logics. Given the importance of approaching strategically in today’s turbulent business environment, both academics and practitioners can use this model to achieve CSR benefits simultaneously for both business and society by managing multiple goals.