Maturity of CSR Implementation at the Organizational Level—From Literature Review to a Comprehensive Model

Abstract

This paper fills the gap in the studies addressing the problem of corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept implementation maturity in an organization approached holistically. It is based on an integrative literature review covering 104 publications indexed in WoS and Scopus. The literature review shows that the maturity of the implementation of CSR at the organizational level is rarely the subject of assessment. The authors dealing with CSR maturity focus their deliberations on such specific areas of enterprise functioning as IT, operational management, supply management, product design and project management. Other authors place CSR among different areas that should be taken into account while determining the maturity of implementation of Industry 4.0 or organizational reputation management. The most commonly used measurement is the five-point scale of the levels typical for CMMI. The theoretical models presented in the source literature are rarely subject to empirical operationalization. This study offers a four-dimensional CSR maturity model that can be used to assess the maturity level of the CSR concept implementation in different types of organizations and also to analyze and compare the maturity levels of different organizations. The dimensions are areas, stakeholders, actions and participation. There are five levels of CSR maturity and only the achievement of the fifth levels in all four dimensions proves the highest level of CSR. The usefulness of the model was determined by eight experts (practitioners working in different organizations) with the use of the “sum-score decision rule”. Both practical and theoretical implications result from this model.