Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study

• Date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Charlotte Karam,Dima Jamali
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12112

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 32–61 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12112

Corporate Social Responsibility in

Developing Countries as an Emerging

Field of Study

Dima Jamali and Charlotte Karam

American University of Beirut, Olayan School of Business, Bliss Street, PO Box 11-0236, Beirut, Lebanon

Corresponding author email: dj00@aub.edu.lb

Given the rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) globally, its local ex-

pressions are as variedas they are increasingly visible in both developed and developing

countries. This paper presents a multilevelreview of the literature on CSR in developing

countries and highlights the key differentiators and nuanced CSR-related considera-

tions that qualify it as a distinctive field of study. This review entails a content analysis

of 452 articles spanning two-and-a-half decades (1990–2015). Based on this comprehen-

sive review, the authors identify the key differentiating attributes of the literature on

CSR in developing countries in relation to depictions of howCSR is conceived or ‘CSR

Thinking’ and depictions of how CSR is practiced and implemented or ‘CSR Doing’.

The authors synthesize from therefive key themes that capture the main aspects of vari-

ation in this literature, namely:(1) complex institutional antecedents within the national

business system (NBS); (2) complex macro-level antecedents outside the NBS; (3) the

salience of multiple actors involved in formal and informal governance; (4) hybridized

and other nuanced forms of CSR expressions; and (5) varied scope of developmental

and detrimental CSR consequences. The paper concludes by accentuating how the nu-

anced forms of CSR in the developing world are invariably contextualized and locally

shaped by multi-level factors and actors embedded within wider formal and informal

governance systems.

Introduction

The literature on corporate social responsibility

(CSR) is growing and becoming more complex and

multifaceted. Various reviews of CSR scholarship

have been published over the last decade, including

general reviews (e.g. Aguinis and Glavas 2012) and

narrowerreviews of specialist areas such as those pub-

lished in this journal (e.g. Secchi (2007) on theories

of CSR; Carroll and Shabana (2010) on the busi-

ness case for CSR; Frynas and Stephens (2015) on

political CSR). The insights and conclusions drawn

from these articles have gone a long way in terms

of mapping ‘what we know and don’t know about

CSR’ (Aguinis and Glavas 2012, p. 932), but have

fallen short in terms of a more nuanced analysis

of how CSR manifests itself in markets outside the

developed core (Egri and Ralston 2008; Kolk and

Lenfant 2010; Kolk and Van Tulder 2010).

The importance of exploring the context-

dependence of CSR has been accentuated in recent

years with calls for closer attention to the peculiar in-

stitutional constellations, or national business system

configurations of developing countries, whichmay ul-

timately lead to different expressions of CSR (Jamali

and Neville 2011; Okoye2012a). Distinctive elements

of CSR in developing countries have been referred to

in the literature, with CSR commonly characterized

as less formalized, more sunken and more philan-

thropic in nature (Jamali and Neville 2011; Visser

2008). Further augmenting the need to explore CSR

in developing countries are the various arguments

against the transferability of frameworks and conclu-

sions drawn in developed countries to those that are

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CSR in Developing Countries 33

developing (Blowfield and Frynas 2005; Idemudia

2011; Luetkenhorst 2004; Moon and Shen 2010).

Gugler and Shi (2009) note that the north–south divi-

de in CSR practice is evident, accentuating the need to

understand the content, objectives and targets of CSR

in context and to tailor one’s theorizing accordingly

(Okoye 2012a; Prieto-Carr´

on et al. 2006).

Despite this burgeoning interest in CSR in devel-

oping countries, there is no systematic review of this

literature to date. Our aim in the current paper is to

document how this literature compares with and con-

tributes to the broader literature on CSR. Our focus

is on two important research questions, namely: (1)

how CSR in developing countries is commonly un-

derstood; and (2) in what ways is CSR expressed and

implemented in practice in developing countries. In

other words, our review of this literature seeks to de-

termine what has been found to be distinctive about

CSR in developing countries as a domain of study.

Our paper makes three important contributions.

First, we develop a comprehensive and interdisci-

plinary review of the specific body of literature on

CSR in developing countries, and situate our analysis

within the broader CSR and management literature.

Second, based on this review, we identify key themes

and insights from the past two decades and the dif-

ferentiating attributes of this body of scholarship as

a distinctive field within the CSR and management

literature. Third, in the final section, we consolidate

the main distinctive themes, identify lingering gaps,

and provide relevant guidance for future research.

We begin with a brief review of key comparative

CSR frameworks and argue that many of these sum-

mative efforts have focused on CSR in developed

countries, with applicability to developing contexts

still underexplored. While recognizing that there is

likely substantial variation across developing coun-

try landscapes, we argue that there are also important

commonalities that have not been explored to permit

a much needed synthesis and consolidation. Follow-

ing this, we describe the scope and method of the

review, detail the main findings and results, and then

end by synthesizing the main themes of variation and

providing directions for future research.

Comparative CSR literature

A number of powerful comparative CSR frameworks

have been advanced in recent years, highlighting the

importance of context in shaping CSR expressions.

These frameworks have drawn primarily on Insti-

tutional Theory and Whitley’s National Business

Systems (NBS) approach (Whitley 1992, 1999). In-

stitutional theory has been instrumental in grounding

analyses of CSR in wider systems of governance

involving the market, the state and historically grown

socio-political institutions (Brammer et al. 2012).

Similarly,the NBS approach has aptly directed atten-

tion to a more thorough analysis of the relationship

between firms and institutions where the system itself

serves as a unit of analysis (Tempel and Walgenbach

2003), and the configuration of its components

is seen to be part of its competitive advantage

(Porter 1990), or analyzed with a view to improving

its competitiveness. Broadly, a National Business

System (NBS) is conceptualized as comprising

distinct institutional features and configurations that

are correlated with national economic performance

(Whitley 1999), including type and functioning of

the financial and control systems, the role of the

state, the level and type of skill development, and

trust and authority relationships (Whitley 1999).

While noting the significant advances in the com-

parative CSR literature framed within institutional

considerations of NBSs, we are also careful to ac-

knowledge the limitations that may be tied to the di-

rect adoption of such frameworks to examine CSR in

developing economies. We begin by noting that there

are frameworks that centralize an Anglo-American

perspective, such as the Matten and Moon (2008)

framework, which makes a distinction between ex-

plicit CSR in economies such as the USA and more

implicit forms of CSR encountered across Europe.

These distinct forms of CSR are linked to the NBS

of each context. They argue that US-style CSR is

characterized by less regulation and more incentive

for voluntary social roles for business firms, whereas

pertinent social obligations are seen in Europe as the

purview of government. Hence, while explicit CSR

encompasses the collection of formalized approaches,

processes and frameworks of the CSR industry that

have largelyemanated from an Anglo-American con-

text (e.g. stakeholder engagement, CSR reporting and

the plethora of standards and guidelines for CSR, e.g.

UNGC), implicit CSR includes perceived mandatory

and/or taken for granted social obligations resulting

in requirements for corporations to address relevant

issues in their particular environments, often stem-

ming from cultural norms about citizenship or stew-

ardship, which may be salient in developing coun-

tries (Matten and Moon 2008). We also note that,

while both the US and Europe share in common the

predominance of market-based forms of organization

supported through strong regulatory oversight and

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