A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. 18, 285–293 (2011)
Published online 6 October 2010 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/csr.251

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility:
A ‘Dynamic Capabilities’ Perspective
Venugopal Ramachandran*
Insitute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai, India

ABSTRACT
In this paper, strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) is defined on the basis of Porter’s theory of competitive advantage. Two kinds of dynamic capabilities are proposed as the precursors to strategic CSR success and operationalized in terms of two sets of associated processes. The effectiveness of these processes is postulated to be dependent on their attributes and the human and social capital employed in them. Implications for practitioners and researchers are outlined. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP
Environment.
Received 14 March 2010; revised 22 August 2010; accepted 31 August 2010
Keywords: strategic CSR; dynamic capabilities; environment management capability; impact assessment processes

Introduction

B

USINESS ORGANIZATIONS ARE UNDER INCREASING PRESSURE TO PARTICIPATE IN SOLVING SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
The range of problems that they are expected to engage in is quite wide; indeed, according to one author,
‘virtually nothing that society at large would like to achieve is beyond the scope of business ethics’ (Wilcke,
2004, p.197). Given this pressure and the fact that corporate social responsibility (CSR) entails costs, business organizations are faced with the contradictory situation of having to engage in social problems on the one hand and maintaining profits on the other. Finding ways in which social goals can be pursued in ways that would not adversely affect profits is therefore an issue of concern to managers and management researchers.
Against this backdrop, a growing stream of practitioner-oriented literature describes a variety of CSR –

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