Does being socially good save firms from bankruptcy? A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

Abstract

 The purpose of the review was to find out, does being responsible saves firms from bankruptcy? What is the relationship between corporate social responsibility and default risk? What methods and measures are used in the literature to evaluate this relationship? And what is the theoretical underpinning of the studies? Moreover, to explore what are the gaps for future work, Web of Science and Scopus databases were utilised to obtain the relevant articles for review. A total of 24 articles were reviewed using PRISMA systematic literature review and bibliometrics. This review finds that the literature has an unidirectional inverse relationship between corporate social responsibility and default risk. Moreover, most literature utilises the stakeholder perspective as the theoretical framework. A  research gap exists in explaining the relationship between different theories and extending the model with various aspects of macro- and micro-economics as well as finance. This article contributes to the theoretical aspect by classifying methods, proxies, and theoretical underpinnings used in the research for corporate social responsibility and default risk.