Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the key concepts for modern businesses (de Leaniz & Rodríguez, 2015; Hanks et al., 2016; Holcomb et al., 2007).
CSR research mainly focused on companies’ social and environmental impacts until the late 1990s, when the concept of Corporate Citizenship (CC) was popularized (e.g., Gardberg & Fombrun, 2006; Valor, 2005). Corporate Citizenship views a corporation as adopting citizen rights of environmental, social, and cultural responsibility towards the community while maintaining the financial responsibility to its stakeholders (Matten & Crane, 2005).
Corporations need to emphasize their commitment as a member of society, rather than external players committed to changing society (Etzioni, 1988).
The boundaries between society, the brand, and its consumers are slowly disappearing with the advent of Stakeholder Capitalism (see Stakeholder Theory, Freedman, 2015)
In stakeholder capitalism corporations need to include governmental bodies, political groups, trade associations, trade unions, communities, financiers, suppliers, employees, and customers in their decisions in contrast to the traditional shareholder model. (Donaldson & Preston, 1995; Friedman & Miles, 2002).
Stakeholder theory often fails to acknowledge the realities of the market and therefore some attempts were made to combine stakeholder theory with a realist theory of social change and differentiation (Friedman & Miles, 2002).