Organizational Slack and CSR Disclosure Reshaping the Impact of CSR Gaps on Technological Innovation Performance
Abstract
Internal and external stakeholders of a corporation often impose conflicting expectations regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Such contradictory demands may create a CSR gap, resulting in an imbalance between internal and external CSR engagement that can undermine firms’ capacity for technological innovation. Drawing on stakeholder theory and resource allocation perspectives, this study investigates the impact of the CSR gap on technological innovation performance using a panel dataset of 3,270 Chinese listed enterprises, comprising 23,764 firm-year observations from 2012 to 2021. Technological innovation performance is measured by both patent output and R&D expenditure to capture innovation outcomes and innovation input. In addition, this study explores whether organizational slack and CSR disclosure quality mitigate the adverse consequences of the CSR gap. The empirical findings indicate that the CSR gap significantly reduces technological innovation performance, suggesting that an unbalanced allocation of CSR resources weakens firms’ innovation capability. Further analysis demonstrates that greater organizational slack and higher-quality CSR disclosure effectively alleviate the negative impact of the CSR gap by providing additional resources and enhancing stakeholder trust. These findings enrich the literature on the CSR–technology innovation nexus by highlighting the detrimental effects of CSR imbalances and identifying two important boundary conditions that buffer these effects. The study offers practical implications for managers, emphasizing the importance of balancing CSR investments across stakeholder groups while strengthening resource flexibility and disclosure transparency to support sustainable technological innovation.
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