Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy Practices, Employee Commitment, Reputation as Sources of Competitive Advantage

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship with corporate competitive advantage (CCA) have gained a tremendous interest among the researchers and practitioners over decades, as evident by the increasing surge of studies in this domain. This study examines how five types (legal, economic, philanthropic, ethical, and environmental) of CSR affect CCA in a developing country through the mediating roles of employee commitment and corporate reputation. Data was collected by survey questionnaires from a sample of 869 participants working at service, real estate, and manufacturing firms in Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong Province, Vietnam. SmartPLS 3.0 software and the partial least squares structural equation modeling method (PLS-SEM) were applied to evaluate the research model and test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that different dimensions of CSR have positive significant effects on employee commitment, corporate reputation and competitive advantage. Besides, employee commitment and corporate reputation were found to meditate the relationship between different types of CSR and CCA. These outcomes contributed to the extension of theory in the fields of CSR and offered some suggestions for managers in implementing CSR initiatives to gain and sustain CCA.