A purpose-action framework for corporate social responsibility in times of shock

Abstract

Extreme events undermine progress towards social sustainability and urge an immediate and broad response from the private sector. Nevertheless, corporate interventions in the face of a shock differ from traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions in some essential aspects not addressed by the literature. To solve this gap, we propose a purpose-action framework to examine and categorize 218 post-shock CSR interventions from 111 companies operating in Spain during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework allows assessing their heterogeneous social sustainability impact. We identify a set of firm dynamic sustainability capabilities -leadership, intentionality, prior stakeholder engagement, and partnership building-underpinning corporate purpose and action to develop an effective and efficient post-shock CSR. This exploratory study extends the literature on the company–society interface and provides a guide to foster social sustainability through CSR in times of shock.