Sociohistorical and Epistemological Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Research
This study provides an epistemological and sociohistorical analysis of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature to identify its construction and part of its genealogy. This study offers two main contributions. First, it elucidates three tendencies that mark the evolution of CSR knowledge production. Second, it suggests that the epistemological project that embodies the theorization of CSR is constantly evolving. Indeed, this epistemological analysis highlights that, given the proliferation of critical and interpretative studies on CSR, research in this field is currently in the middle of two tendencies epitomized by the wider field of organizational theory.