The Two Sides of Community Political Conservatism and CSR: Exploring the role of community social connectedness

Abstract

Despite decades of globalization, organization studies have consistently found evidence of community influences on firm behavior. In this study, we develop and test a nuanced theory on the relationship between community political conservatism and corporate social responsibility engagement by integrating social capital theory and the logic of appropriateness. We demonstrate that the influence of community political conservatism is contingent upon two types of community social capital: interfirm and cooperative social connectedness. These two types of social connectedness elicit the manifestation of two different aspects from community political conservatism: free-market and community orientations. While interfirm social connectedness enhances the negative relationship between community political conservatism and corporate social responsibility engagement, cooperative social connectedness weakens it.