Towards a typology of strategic corporate social responsibility through camouflage and courtship analogies

This paper develops a theory of strategic corporate social responsibility responses, by drawing on the analogy of biological species‐level adaptations of camouflage and courtship found in the natural world. In so doing, we focus on the substantive response and associated strategic motivation to engage in different types of CSR within a mainstreaming environment; and the mechanisms by which it occurs in differing scenarios, framed through a biological interpretative lens. We presents eight strategic approaches to CSR, each defined by a camouflage or courtship approach. Each strategy is considered through the lens of their biological comparators and published case vignettes of CSR strategies within firms. The paper concludes by discussing a future research agenda building on the theoretical framework presented.