Global Journal of Business Management

Global Journal of Business Management ISSN 6731-4538 Vol. 8 (6), pp. 001-010, June, 2014. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Epistemological evolution of corporate social responsibility in management: An empirical analysis of 35 years of research

Alejandro Alvarado Herrera¹, Enrique Bigné Alcañiz², Rafael Currás Pérez²* and Isabel Sánchez García²

¹División de Desarrollo Sustentable, University of Quintana Roo, Av. Andrés Quintana Roo s/n, Ed. B. 77600 Cozumel, Mexico.

²Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics, University of Valencia, Avda, Tarongers s/n. Ed. Department Oriental. 46022 Valencia, Spain.

Accepted 18 February, 2013

Abstract

The epistemological evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the management literature is analyzed from 1972 to 2006 to update and extend previous state-of-the-art research by de Bakker, Groenewegen and Den Hond (2005 and 2006). Results of the content analysis of 1082 featured articles published in indexed journals reveal that, in the first place, CSR construct has evolved from vagueness to testing of the theory fitting to a progressive view and allow discarding both suppositional stances attributed to CSR literature, Variegational and Normativist. Secondly, findings also show that, in quantitative terms, there has been a significant growing in the total number of papers amongst the whole studied period. Finally, the findings confirm that, epistemologically speaking, CSR and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) literatures mainly deal with the same core construct.

Key words: Corporate social responsibility, corporate social performance, epistemological evolution, state-of-the-art, content analysis, theory development.