What drives CSR specialization? The roles of relative marketing capability and market conditions

Teng, Fangyuan, Rahman, Mahabubur and Jang, Seongsoo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5948-0876 2026. What drives CSR specialization? The roles of relative marketing capability and market conditions. Journal of Business Research Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Firms engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) through either a generalist approach, addressing many CSR areas, or a specialist approach, focusing on a few. Most firms adopt the latter, yet little is known about what drives CSR specialization, especially the role of organizational capabilities. Drawing on resource advantage theory and dynamic capabilities theory, this study examines whether and how a firm’s relative marketing capability (RMC) affects CSR specialization, and how market conditions—munificence, concentration, and dynamism—moderate this relationship. Using panel data from 855 firms across six countries (2012-2021) and a dynamic estimation method addressing endogeneity, we find that RMC positively influences CSR specialization. Furthermore, market conditions moderate the relationship between RMC and CSR specialization; firms with greater RMC specialize in CSR when they face less munificent, more concentrated, or more dynamic markets. The findings remain consistent across a battery of robustness analyses.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0148-2963
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 January 2026
Date of Acceptance:	6 January 2026
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2026 10:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183610

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