An Inquiry into MNEs’ CSR Practices: Literature Review, Managerial and Academic Perspectives

As a result of growing concerns by various stakeholder groups for the economic, social, and environmental value created by multinational enterprises (MNEs), a significant amount of research has focused on exploring MNEs’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). This article extends existing knowledge by steering through extant research on MNE’s CSR practices as embedded in MNEs’ international competitive behavior (Rodriguez-Gomez et al., 2020). The paper reviews 208 empirical studies conducted on this subject during the period 1997-2022 and offers a systematized analysis along aspects pertaining to theoretical perspectives, research design, research scope, research method, and thematic emphasis. It synthesizes existing knowledge in a state-of-the art conceptual framework incorporating the relations between the identified thematic priorities. It also responds to calls for a better understanding of how MNEs’ CSR managers see the importance of the managerial implications extracted from the reviewed studies by providing an evaluation of the key managerial implications by 114 managers of MNEs having their headquarters in China, Germany, and the US. Finally, the paper offers fruitful directions for future research based on the findings of a survey among 42 international business scholars who have been researching on CSR as part of MNEs’ corporate behavior.