Basics of macro to microlevel corporate social responsibility and advancement in triple bottom line theory

Abstract The accounting framework of businesses massively expanded in the 1990s to triple bottom line (TBL) with consideration of social and environmental performance in addition to financial performance. To meet the challenges of expressing care to the environment as well as to internal and external stakeholders associated with society, research on investment of resources through corporate volunteering (CV) programs is accelerated in the current decade. Researchers have started using the philosophy of epistemology with the positioning of interpretivism explaining how the people participate in cultural and social life. Reintegrating the important fundamental and scattered concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and TBL, this article highlights the motivational facet of employees of socially responsible companies, being termed as “Internal People‐Line” theory as the significant and nonidentical subset of TBL. With the ingredients of self‐determination theory, the internal people line (IPL) by relational, moral, and instrumental motivations would be useful for recognition, repeated participation in community programs, and managerial support. This research has two major contributions to the literature of society: (a) Identification of seventh P for the bottom line and (b) Development of IPL theory. It is found that effective utilization of the resources in CV programs largely depends upon the intrinsic motivation of IPL (employees). This article is the first to accumulate and interpret the strewn basic concepts of CSR (macro to microlevel) using holistic approach to advance the research model of TBL with the introduction of IPL theory.