The link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and competitiveness has been examined mainly at the business level. The purpose of this paper is to improve conceptual understanding and provide empirical evidence on the link between CSR and competitiveness at the national level. We draw on an eclectic-synthetic framework of international economics, strategic management and CSR literatures to explore conceptually whether and how CSR can impact on the competitiveness of nations, and test our hypotheses empirically with a sample of 19 developed (...) countries over a 6-year period. Our evidence suggests that CSR can make a significant positive contribution to national competitiveness, as measured by national living standards. We also find that countries with a relatively low innovation record can benefit more, as compared to highly innovative countries, by implementing nationwide CSR-based positioning strategies. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose that economic sustainability is seen in terms of (inter-temporal and inter-national) value creation. We claim that value appropriation (or capture), can become a constraint to economic sustainability. We propose that for sustainable value creation to be fostered, corporate governance needs to be aligned to public and supra-national governance. In order to achieve this, a hierarchically layered set of ‘agencies’, needs to be diagnosed and the issue of incentive alignment addressed. Enlightened self-interest, pluralism and diversity, as (...) well as a representative supra-national organisation for world-wide economic sustainability can serve as a new, more ‘ethically correct’ governance for economic sustainability, but not a panacea. (shrink)

The year 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of Edith Penrose’s The Theory of the Growth of the Firm and saw the third edition of her now-classic book. Over the past twenty-five years or so, TGF has become a canonical reference to the currently dominant resource, knowledge, and capabilities-based approaches to business strategy, and to a lesser extent to the theory of the multinational enterprise, international business, and development scholarship. This article presents TGF’s ideas and assesses them critically. It discusses Penrose’s (...) early contributions to economics, subsequent ideas in economics that are related to her book, the book’s contribution to organizational economics, business strategy, strategic human resource management, strategic entrepreneurship, recent debates on value creation and capture, and the political economy of globalization and development. The article also touches upon Penrose’s epistemology. Lastly, it outlines possible ways in which TGF can be generalized, critiqued, and integrated with other theories. (shrink)