Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer:Investigating Firm Incentives to Participate in Strategic CoCSR

Abstract

We investigate firm incentives for engaging in collaborative corporate social responsibility (CoCSR) tasks. Our investigation continues in the vein of earlier theoretical research that established the branding role of strategic CSR. We first consider the case of strategic partners collaborating on CSR tasks. We demonstrate that CoCSR will not always be sustainable as it will be subject to free-riding. We then consider the case of competing firms collaborating on CSR tasks. We demonstrate that firms will be more likely to engage in CoCSR with their closest competitors than with indirect competitors or even firms selling complementary goods