Abstract
This study examines the prevailing assumption in stakeholder and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature that stakeholder integration inherently motivates organizations toward more socially responsible behavior. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this research investigates the conditions under which stakeholder-centric organizations instead engage in deviant behavior that may not reflect genuine social responsibility. Using resource dependence theory, we posit that asymmetric dependency coupled with heterogeneous stakeholder interests can compel stakeholder-centric firms to engage in deviant behavior. To test this hypothesis, we applied a multilevel model to a subset of 12,246 observations across 2,939 stakeholder-centric firms from 2007 to 2021, allowing for a nuanced examination of the influence of resource dependency on deviant behavior while controlling for variation across countries, industries, firms, and years. The results confirm our hypotheses and capture the complexity of the nexus between stakeholder theory and CSR while highlighting that socially responsible behavior cannot always be equated with stakeholder centricity.