Prof Giarratana, Professor in the Strategy Department at IE Business school, Madrid, where he is also Vice-Rector of Research and recently became member of the Strategy & Organisation Division at the University of Bath, will discuss his paper (with M. Pasquini):

The strategy research on the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) investments and economic performance has its mainstream theoretical approach in Stakeholder Theory.

This paper responds to some recent criticisms of this perspective by proposing a theoretical framework based on Social Identity Theory that explains how a focal stakeholder could create economic value for a company following CSR investments.

We present empirical evidence consistent with the theory based on a scenario-based survey conducted with 960 participant valid responses. We find that CSR that are geographically closer to the focal stakeholder and that are more proximate to the core business of the company have a more positive impact on standard measures of company employer and consumer brand value.