Corporate social responsibility and innovative capacity: intersection in a macro-level perspective

This study explores the link between macro (country-level) corporate social responsibility penetration and innovative capacity presenting new findings on the potential influence that various elements shaping innovation have on the endorsement of social responsibility among national business systems. Relying on cross-sectional data, a composite index for quantifying the proliferation of corporate social responsibility is employed and well-established innovation metrics are utilized. Findings do not contradict the preceding but limited evidence on corporate social responsibility practices considering innovation, nevertheless, the negative relationships found in our empirically supported and internally consistent proposed models merit supplementary consideration and examination. The paper offers new insights to innovation theorists and political economy researchers for more detailed investigations of critical drivers, such as innovation, which shape country-level corporate social responsibility specificities of and potentially encapsulate a critical parameter in the self-regulation agenda-setting of business entities. In these lines the study indicates that innovation, as moderator of corporate social responsibility adoption, has to be included in empirical models where measures of corporate social responsibility penetration and innovative potential are employed

Incentives and inhibiting factors of eco-innovation in the Spanish firms.

This paper investigates the incentives and inhibiting factors of eco-innovation capacities in the firm. Firms materialize the objectives of eco-innovation from a reactive attitude to external pressures, to a more proactive attitude that implies the voluntary incorporation of eco-innovation activities. This variability in the behaviour of companies with respect to the level of eco-innovation development has been a motivator for the research. However, despite the importance of this research question, this has been approached in a dispersed way from multiple approaches. From a dynamic capabilities perspective, we assume that the innovation capacity of the firm encourages eco-innovations. Our paper is focused on the process of eco-innovation, identifying the elements that facilitate or hinder the eco-innovation in the firm. We study the Spanish case, using a panel from the Spanish Innovation Survey, with a sample of 5,461 Spanish firms. The results highlight that the complexity of the eco-innovation process negatively affects the decision to develop eco-innovations. However, our results suggest that institutions and organizations of the Spanish environment are making efforts to compensate these obstacles and provide incentives to develop eco-innovations