Strategic leadership of social and environmental responsibility: a review and research agenda

Abstract

A rising stream of research is investigating how chief executive officers (CEOs), top management teams (TMTs), and boards of directors (BODs) shape their organizations’ responsible initiatives and address social and environmental issues. What do we know about this topic and how can we move this research forward? This paper aims to address this question and contribute to strategic leadership literature by systematically reviewing 326 studies published between 2000 and 2024 across 36 journals. Embracing a comprehensive conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR), our review identifies six main themes that elucidate the influence of CEOs, TMTs, and BODs on CSR: moral values, abilities and experience, external forces and signals, diverse perspectives, financial motives, and power distribution. We synthesize research on these themes, illustrate the field’s theoretical foundations, provide an organizing framework, and pinpoint avenues for future scholarly exploration.