There is increasing pressure from societies for corporations to become more responsible. Against this background, corporate responsibility (CR), which aims at integrating financial with ethical, social, and environmental aspects in management, has been a concept of growing interest. Research has shown that companies develop through conceptual stages from defensive to transformational on a learning curve. We present a literature review on evolutionary models of corporate responsibility (CR) and show possible alleys for future research. We argue that future research should be more rigorous in the differentiation of theoretical and empirical research and that different learning characteristics, such as learning direction, transition, and speed all require further inquiry.

AB - There is increasing pressure from societies for corporations to become more responsible. Against this background, corporate responsibility (CR), which aims at integrating financial with ethical, social, and environmental aspects in management, has been a concept of growing interest. Research has shown that companies develop through conceptual stages from defensive to transformational on a learning curve. We present a literature review on evolutionary models of corporate responsibility (CR) and show possible alleys for future research. We argue that future research should be more rigorous in the differentiation of theoretical and empirical research and that different learning characteristics, such as learning direction, transition, and speed all require further inquiry.