Turning Corporate Social Responsibility‐driven Opportunities in Competitive Advantages: a Two‐dimensional Model

Employing corporate social responsibility (CSR) for competitiveness enhancement requires a radical change in managerial thinking and new tools for supporting business activities. Indeed, the lack of suitable measures for detecting the stage of a company CSR cultural development hinders the identification and exploitation of business opportunities related to CSR. Following this lead, in this paper, we propose a two‐dimensional CSR model for supporting managers in their pursuing for long‐term competitiveness, turning CSR‐driven opportunities in business advantages. The model is based on two dimensions: the “CSR development” dimension and the “CSR commitment” dimension. The CSR development dimension allows decision makers to position companies with respect to the stage of their CSR cultural evolution, whereas the CSR commitment dimension assesses companies' degree of commitment based on their economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic CSR performance. The position that a company occupies in the two‐dimensional CSR model describes both its actual stage of CSR cultural development and its CSR commitment. Finally, the model is employed to a case study in the banking sector. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.