From efficiency to legitimacy: the changing logic of internal CSR in emerging multinationals during internationalization.

Abstract

This paper focuses on internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) (i.e. shareholder responsibility and employee responsibility) changes within emerging-market multinational companies (EMNCs) with a resource constraints perspective and attention-based view, providing a finely variegated analysis of and new insights into the internationalization-CSR relationship. Specifically, as EMNCs' resource constraints change from high to low and the primary focus shifts during internationalization, their dominant logic moves from efficiency to legitimacy; correspondingly, their internal CSR shows a U-shaped change-first declining and then increasing. This nonlinear model is supported by an empirical test of Chinese listed MNCs from 2013 to 2018. On this basis, the moderating roles of state-owned background and innovation-oriented strategy are examined, as both affect the resource constraints and attention structure of EMNCs during internationalization. We also provide a sensitivity analysis of internationalization's impact on each dimension of internal CSR and an in-depth discussion of our findings.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41291-022-00213-2.