Corporate social responsibility: reviewed, rated, revised

Purpose This paper is a critical literature review of corporate social responsibility (CSR) research in both general management and hospitality management literature. This paper aims to discuss trends, commonalities and inconsistencies to better understand the state of contemporary scholarship, and it calls for a context-specific conceptual engagement with the phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review, noting and critiquing a general tendency towards measurement of financial and other internal benefit impacts. Findings Hospitality management is well-positioned to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of CSR; yet, research has uncritically adopted the instrumental emphasis on assessing processes, perceptions and private profitability from the general management literature, without engaging on a contextually specific and/or theoretical level. Research limitations/implications CSR research is abundant and therefore difficult to summarise in one paper. The primarily Anglo-American and Asian contextual bias is reflected in this review. Practical implications Consistently inconsistent results challenge the portability of financial impact studies. Studies are needed to re-evaluate the concept of CSR, as it pertains to hospitality and measure the effectiveness of CSR activities relative to context and resource availability. Social implications Further research into the scope of CSR in hospitality management, with an emphasis on recuperating social value, would lead to widespread positive social implications. Originality/value This critical review offers a new perspective on CSR in the hospitality literature and industry, calling for a reconsideration of the concept in context, and formulates a working definition.