Corporate social responsibility strategy, sustainable product attributes, and export performance

Abstract

The current article is one of the first studies to address the role of corporate social responsibility strategy (CSRS) in the development of performance-oriented sustainable product attributes (SPA) mix in manufacturing firms. We specifically analyze whether the extent of SPA development by the firm's CSRS matches SPA contribution in export performance or do firms need to adapt CSRS to develop a performance-oriented SPA mix. The empirical analysis uses a panel dataset of 433 manufacturing firms from the United States during 2002–2017. The findings reveal the difference between SPA's outcome (contribution) and SPA development in firms. Further analysis of disaggregated SPA explains the reasoning behind this difference because the firm's CSRS' emphasis on developing distinct attributes of SPA tends to mismatch the proportionate contribution of distinct attributes of SPA in export performance. Our study contributes to SPA, CSRS, and export performance literature by establishing the differences in performance contribution and development of aggregated and disaggregated SPA in manufacturing firms.