Corporate Social Performance Disoriented: Saving the Lost Paradigm?

Corporate social performance (CSP) has been a prominent concept in the management literature dealing with the social role and impacts of the corporation; it has been promulgated as a unifying paradigm for the field. However, the concept of CSP is still lacking strong theoretical foundations and empirical validity, suggesting that the paradigmatic status of CSP might be lost. In this paper, the authors draw on Hirsch and Levin’s (1999) life cycle approach to explore the development of CSP as a concept, explain why it has so recurrently failed to deliver on these dimensions, and offer possible routes for future research that may potentially ameliorate this problem.