Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the scope of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and ‘Social Value Initiatives’ (SVIs) among corporations. The paper adopts a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) based on secondary data from 50 UK Multinational corporations. The findings suggest that both social and commercial enterprises focus on the adoption of the ‘CSR’ practices based on the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (TBL) as defined in the ‘Elkington, 1997 framework’ of economic, environmental and social sustainability. The difference is that while the ‘SVIs’ of commercial enterprises develop as an operational strategy at the later stages of the business, the ‘SVIs’ of social enterprises are embedded during the enterprise creation stage. Based on the findings, this paper develops a conceptual ‘Social Value Initiatives’ (SVIs) framework that forms the domain of social value practices. We suggest that future studies should focus on adopting qualitative-oriented primary research to explore sustainability approaches that will capture the views of management, customers, employees and shareholders. This paper contributes to the knowledge on CSR and social value practices among social and commercial enterprises.