Cultural dimensions and corporate social responsibility: A cross-country analysis

The diffusion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has witnessed a surge in recent years but the rate of adoption among national business sectors diverges considerably. In this paper we attempt to frame the influence of national culture on CSR by assessing national CSR penetration under well-established cultural dimensions. We offer new evidence on the influence of cultural specificity - proxied by Hofstede’s model - on the adoption and endorsement of CSR among national business sectors. Findings suggest that three of the six cultural dimensions affect CSR penetration after controlling for aspects of socioeconomic development. Specifically, elements of long-term versus short-term orientation and indulgence versus restraint affect positively the composite CSR index while uncertainty avoidance has a negative effect. In contrast, the effect of, individualism, power distance and masculinity is found to be insignificant. These findings provide fertile ground to theorists and researchers for a deeper investigation of the impact of parameters that define the cultural specificity of CSR and act as moderators of organizational self-regulation.