Progressive and Rational CSR as Catalysts of New Product Introductions
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Progressive and Rational CSR as Catalysts of New Product Introductions Maria Jose Murcia1 Received: 3 November 2019 / Accepted: 17 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Whereas extant literature has examined the overall effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on innovation, it is argued that CSR is a multidimensional concept encompassing both progressive activities concerning a firm’s engagement in the social domain, as well as rational aspects pertaining to corporate governance practices and the protection of shareholder rights. This study integrates organizational hypocrisy with the knowledge-based view literatures to examine how different forms of CSR engagement affect the rate of new product introductions (NPI). Results suggest that the mechanisms by which progressive and rational CSR are associated to increases in the rate of NPI differ. Specifically, while progressive CSR positively affects the rate of NPI and such effect is deemed stronger for firms that are more vertically integrated, the effect of rational CSR on the rate of NPI is conditional on a firm’s level of absorptive capacity. Keywords Corporate social responsibility · Progressive CSR · Rational CSR · Organizational hypocrisy · Organizational façades · Knowledge-based view · New product introductions · Innovation
Introduction Innovation is a key driver of firm competitiveness and therefore has been an important subject of scholarly inquiry (Domínguez-Escrig et al. 2019). At the heart of a firm’s innovation performance are new product introductions (NPI) (Damanpour 1991). NPI represent the potential commercial value of firms’ innovation capabilities and are considered a primary mechanism through which they adapt to changing business environments, and achieve competitive advantages (Nadkarni and Chen 2014). Whereas the innovation literature has devoted substantial attention to study the role of firms’ market orientation and research and development (R&D) investments for innovation performance (Crossan and Apaydin 2010), a more recent stream of research has argued that a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement may also affect innovating activity (Bocquet et al. 2017; Flammer and Kacperczyk 2016; Martinez-Conesa et al. 2017). These studies suggest * Maria Jose Murcia [email protected] 1
IAE Business School and Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales, U. Austral, Mariano Acosta s/n y Ruta Prov. 8. Pilar, B1629WWA Buenos Aires, Argentina
that CSR may help firms in gaining valuable resources and capabilities that, in turn, may foster NPI. Extant literature, however, considers CSR as a unidimensional construct and thus a fine-grained understanding of how various forms of CSR may affect NPI has not yet been developed. Moreover, treating CSR as a unidimensional construct may have obscured individual effects that different dimensions may have on the rate of NPI. To overcome this shortcoming, the current study considers CSR a multidimensional construct that bundles together multiple and even dissimila
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