Abstract
By proposing a stakeholder salience conditional strategic model, we challenge the conventional view that internationalization improves exporting firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) performances. Our model embeds the two impetuses for firms to improve CSR performances, answering stakeholder scrutiny and gaining competitive advantage, into one framework. It predicts that when internationalization reduces the salience of domestic stakeholders too much or the multinational enterprises (MNEs) do not consider CSR a competitive strategy, internationalization could harm CSR performance domestically. We find robust evidence for our model’s predictions using the data of Chinese listed firms. We also quantify the relative magnitudes of stakeholder salience and competitive advantage in driving CSR performance. Our paper contributes to the international business literature by presenting theory and evidence that internationalization could harm CSR performance.