What Are the Outcomes of Social Responsibility?

The popularity of CSR at the last decades can be partly explained by companies increasing recognition and awareness on the fact that doing good can pay off in the long run. Although these organizational level outcomes are important to encourage the company to maintain its commitment in the future and stimulate the competitors to follow the socially responsible counterparts, the outcomes of CSR are not only limited by these organizational level variables. In the current chapter, similar to the analysis of its antecedents, the consequences of CSR have been also articulated at the (1) micro or individual level, (2) meso or organizational level, and (3) macro or environmental level. At the individual level, most scholars focus on the impact of socially responsible business decisions and activities to the managers’ career, benefits or further decisions. Although there is a growing interest of scholars to the impact of CSR to organizational level variables, the literature mostly neglects its implications at the institutional and global levels. In order to connect CSR with United Nations’ (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs), there is a need for more clear understanding on the larger level implications of CSR.