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Problem and objectives
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not new to India (Sundar, 2000; Singh and Agarwal, 2017). Ever since the nineteenth century, merchants have engaged in community development through donations (Arevalo and Aravind, 2011; Verma, 2017). However, CSR in India has gone through transition from Gandhi’s “Trusteeship model” to the Companies Act 2013, making CSR mandatory (Mitra and Schmidpeter, 2016; Gatti et al., 2018). Nevertheless, its rich history of giving has influenced India’s approach to CSR up until today (Garg and Ambrosius, 2018).
With regard to the reasons firms choose to pursue CSR, there is often a distinction identified between philanthropic and strategic motives (Graafland and Van de Ven, 2006; Dhanesh, 2015). The strategic motive suggests that firms pursue CSR in the hopes of achieving profitability. The philanthropic motive suggests that firms pursue CSR because they perceive a moral duty toward society. Although, the Indian Government made CSR mandatory in 2013 for firms above a certain size, the philanthropic and strategic motives still stand out as the main drivers of Indian companies’ CSR practices (Dhanesh, 2015; Gupta, 2016; Chhaparia and Jha, 2018).
Existing research reveals that CSR is mainly driven by the values of CEOs and top management (Planken et al., 2010; Arevalo and Aravind, 2011; Singh and Agarwal, 2014). In line with upper echelon theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984), CSR activities of firms can be viewed as a reflection of the values and cognitive bases of their most powerful actors (Park et al., 2017). In India, the CSR orientation (CSRO) of CEOs and top managers is particularly relevant, given their dominant role in many Indian firms (Friedmann et al., 2018).
While the key role of top managers’ CSRO is undisputed, there are no studies that have empirically investigated its determinants in the context of India. Hence, not only to observe whether philanthropic or strategic CSR activities are implemented but also understand why individuals pursue a particular approach, it is crucial to examine the impact of different determinants. This knowledge would allow firms to recruit managers with the desired CSRO. Employees working in companies with a congruent CSRO to their own were found to be more satisfied with their work (Singhapakdi et al., 2015). Moreover, a congruent CSRO would...