Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance in Hospitality Industry: A Critical Review

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the status quo of the research in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance in hospitality industry. A critical review has been conducted based on 69 good quality journal papers by using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods. The results show quantitative method is the main stream of methodology used and US dataset is more preferable. Besides, stakeholder perspective represents the main school of thoughts in recent years. Although majority of the studies have proved positive association between CSR and financial performance, negative relationship is still evidenced by research with samples of loss-making firms. Furthermore, many studies suggest developing conceptual framework or furthering the extant theoretical framework to cope with the rapid changes in CSR fields as well as the diversified CSR behaviour of the public companies in today’s business world. The findings of this critical review bring additional insight to the CSR and hospitality academia and can stimulate scholars’ further study on how to achieve balance between social and financial performance of public companies in this industry. Theoretically, this critical review enlightens the need for developing/extending the classical theoretical model for matching with the new phenomenon in the CSR field. Practically, the review results also provide valuable information and suggestions to industry operators for their improvement in CSR practice.