Volume and value of technological innovation: the role of corporate social responsibility and business architectural factors

Abstract

The understanding of firm‐level drivers of technological innovation has been concentrated on a firm's core business related factors. How a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives impact a firm's technological innovation is notably understudied in the literature, even though business firms are increasingly recognizing the multifaceted impact of CSR on various corporate outcomes including technological advancements. This study bridges this gap by linking CSR to firm technological innovation as measured by both innovation volume and value. Furthermore, a set of business architectural factors, including market emphasis, related/unrelated diversification, and vertical integration, are incorporated as moderating factors to generate a granular understanding pertaining to CSR's innovation implications. We collected a large sample set, employed a series of robust empirical methods, and found that CSR has a consistently positive impact on both innovation volume and value, and the magnitude of these relationships differs across various business architectural factors. This study contributes to the innovation literature, strategic CSR theory, instrumental stakeholder theory, and provides useful guidelines for business practices.