Corporate social responsibility: a crossroad between changing values, innovation and internationalisation

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be conceived as a construct that embraces different ideas, conceptions and relations between firms and society. This role as interface allows CSR to act as a business driver to transfer cultural values from the macro-level and transform them into part of corporate culture in the micro-level. Considering this integrative theoretical framework, relationships among development, changing values, CSR, innovation, and internationalisation are analysed. An empirical study using a Structural Equation Model (SEM) of Partial Least Square (PLS) technique, based on data from 32 countries, has been made. The results show that when society’s values shift to post-materialism, firms that integrate CSR in their corporate culture obtain a source of knowledge creation that encourages firms’ innovation and internationalisation.