RT Article
T1 Do corporate customers prefer socially responsible suppliers?: an instrumental stakeholder theory perspective
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 185
IS 3
SP 689
OP 712
A1 Tao, Ran
A1 Wu, Jian
A1 Zhao, Hong
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1852236396
AB This paper studies the way supplier firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects their likelihood of being selected as new suppliers. Using a large sample of US public firms with detailed supply chain and CSR data, we provide empirical evidence that corporate customers prefer socially responsible suppliers, and that the effect is more prominent when the supplier industry is more competitive, the customer’s own CSR performance is better, or the supplier and the customer have more similar CSR focuses. Our paper contributes to the literature of instrumental stakeholder theory (IST) by confirming corporate customer attraction as a desirable outcome of supplier CSR engagement. It complements the existing IST studies on customer responses by showing that CSR attracts not only final customers but also corporate customers. Moreover, by focusing on corporate customers’ revealed preferences for socially responsible suppliers, our paper also complements the stated-preference-based evidence in the literature of sustainable supply chain management. Our paper’s findings encourage supplier firm managers to invest in CSR to gain competitive advantages in the form of a higher likelihood of selection while simultaneously making positive contributions to society.
K1 Corporate customer
K1 Corporate Social Responsibility
K1 Instrumental stakeholder theory
K1 Supplier selection
K1 Sustainable supply chain management
K1 Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
DO 10.1007/s10551-022-05171-5