Religion and CSR: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Around the turn of the millennium, a growing body of literature emerged that focuses on the relationship between religion and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although the connection between religion and CSR seems obvious at first, the literature in this field yields conflicting results. This paper provides the first systematic review of the literature that deals with the relation between religion and CSR. We categorized the literature into a matrix, which distinguishes the level of analysis (micro/macro) on the one hand and types of approaches (normative/empirical) on the other. Results are clustered according to the religions they address to identify similarities between and locate trends in research.