Effect of ethical leadership and corporate social responsibility on firm performance: A systematic review

Abstract

Academic and corporate interest in ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and firm performance has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In fact, many research papers and journal special issues have been focused on these three domains. In this context, this paper conducts a systematic review on the concepts of ethical leadership and CSR and their impact on firm performance. 114 papers published over a period of 58 years (1958–2016) were selected and analyzed according to descriptive and content perspectives to propose a conceptual framework and define a future research agenda. In fact, the main results allow us to derive six main propositions representing possible areas of investigation to direct research on the topic. More in details, the body of literature highlights that financial factors are the main barriers affecting the adoption of CSR practices. On the contrary, internal and external environment was found to represent a critical success factor in the adoption of CSR practices. Finally, the results highlight that personal values have impact on ethical leadership that in turn has direct positive impact on CSR and direct and indirect impact on firm performance.

Corporate social responsibility and brand passion among consumers: Theory and evidence

“…Consistent with hypothesized relations, our research supported the direct impact of consumer perception of CSR on brand passion. This finding is in line with past publications, which revealed a considerable influence of CSR initiatives on marketing outcomes such as a firm's sales performance (Saha et al, 2020), brand loyalty (Ghauri et al, 2015), and actual buying behavior (Eshra & Beshir, 2017).…”

“…Similarly, Ghauri et al (2015) reported that CSR associations influence consumers' product evaluation. Likewise, Holt et al (2004); Saha et al (2020), in a marketing domain, reported that CSR explains brand preferences in the way that consumers perceive that global brands have a responsibility to deal with societal issues. Another study by Vlachos and Vrechopoulos (2012) noted that customer perception of CSR positively influences their brand love.…”

“…CSR is a self‐regulating business model that aims to contribute to the societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in ethically oriented practices (Boulouta & Pitelis, 2014; de Bakker, Matten, Spence, & Wickert, 2020; Vishwanathan, van Oosterhout, Heugens, Duran, & van Essen, 2020). Past studies have shown that companies practicing CSR activities will have more positive outcomes such as the sales performance of firms (Saha, Cerchione, Singh, & Dahiya, 2020), brand loyalty (Ghauri, Park, Oh, Moon, & Lee, 2015), and actual buying behavior (Eshra & Beshir, 2017) than companies that do not practice CSR activities. Likewise, a growing body of marketing research has reported that customers will have positive attitudes toward companies practicing CSR activities (Nan & Heo, 2007).…”

The value relevance of corporate financial and nonfinancial information provided by the integrated report: A systematic review

“…Among the different types of reviews that can be conducted (Snyder, 2019), we can recall narrative reviews (Perego et al, 2016), systematic reviews (Centobelli, Cerchione, Chiaroni, Del Vecchio, & Urbinati, 2020;Cillo, Messeni Petruzzelli, Ardito, & Del Giudice, 2019;Saha, Shashi, Cerchione, Singh, & Dahiya, 2019;Widyawati, 2019;Tranfield et al, 2003), structured literature reviews (Massaro, Dumay, & Guthrie, 2016) We opted for a systematic review because it allows research on a particular question to be comprehensively located and synthesized, using organized, transparent, and replicable procedures at each step in the process (Littell, 2008) and because it is characterized, with respect to the traditional narrative review, by the rigor of the search process (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). In detail, we follow the four steps proposed by Fink (2010), enriched using the structure proposed by Tranfield et al (2003), consistently with Stechemesser and Guenther (2012).…”

Optimal Strategies of Product Price, Quality, and Corporate Environmental Responsibility

“…Though there is no widely accepted definition of CER [7,8,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30], for the sake of convenience, we support that CER is one of three facets of CSR, and focuses on pollution prevention and cleaner production. Furthermore, we regard the following terms as equivalent to CER: CSR in the environment, environmental CSR, environmental corporate responsibility.…”