Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
With increasing concern about sustainability issues, there have been initiatives across the world to wake up to the concept of sustainable economic growth. In the wake of several global environmental crises, the integration of business with society has become the need of the hour. The role of corporations for sustainable practices is becoming crucial. With rapid climate change and expanding carbon footprint, firms need to look beyond “value creation” which solely focuses on economic value added (Freeman, 1984; Porter and Kramer, 2011; Sisodia, 2009). The triple bottom line concept proposed by Elkington (1998) emphasizes that organizations need to measure business performance from three dimensions, namely, people, planet and profit, to portray the commitment to their stakeholders, environment and financial gains.
Organizations’ proactive outreach to its stakeholder groups in addressing social and environmental challenges can be considered as their socially responsible behaviour. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can act as the driving force in meeting the challenges of inclusive and sustainable development (Oliver, 2015). Government regulations can play a significant role in encouraging companies in advancing their CSR practices (Oliver, 2015; Vogel, 2005). Apparently, the mandatory legislation has increased the overall CSR participation in India (Kanji and Agrawal, 2016). According to Environics International survey (2001), India was ranked last among the countries concerned about CSR practices but with the regulatory mandate, India rose to the top in Asia and second globally (Kanji and Agrawal, 2016). Mishra and Banerjee (2019) show that Indian companies are increasingly realizing the importance of CSR. Yet, the transition from voluntary to mandatory CSR has been perceived as a burden by many companies in the absence of any strategic CSR planning (Atale and Helge, 2014; Mukherjee and Bird, 2016; Sheth and Sinha, 2015). Moreover, many Indian companies, which were doing CSR even before the mandate, reduced their CSR spending from earlier levels, just enough to comply (Desai et al., 2015; Bird et al., 2016). Although the total participation in CSR has increased, the effectiveness of mandatory CSR is yet to be understood. Identification of strategic framework in CSR practice has become crucial (Atale and Helge, 2014). Collective outcome of the studies investigating the impact of CSR on firm performance is equivocal and inconclusive (Bhattacharya and Rahman, 2019, 2020; Dharmapala...