Strategic attributions of corporate social responsibility and environmental management: The business case for doing well by doing good!

Generally, businesses are capable of implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmentally sustainable behaviors as they pursue their profit-making activities. While there are a number of contributions that investigated the effect of CSR and responsible environmental practices on the companies' bottom lines, few studies were focused on the strategic attributions of responsible corporate behaviors in the tourism industry context, during an unprecedented pandemic situation. Hence this research investigates the stakeholders' perceptions on the hospitality businesses' social responsibility and environmentally friendly practices. The data were collected from a sample of 462 research participants who worked in tourism and hospitality. The findings suggest that their employers' stakeholders were triggering their businesses to engage in ethical behaviors, responsible human resources management and to invest in environmentally friendly initiatives. As a result, they were creating value to their companies, to society and to the natural environment. In sum, this contribution implies that there are strategic attributions of CSR behaviors and of environmentally sustainable practices as responsible businesses can improve their growth prospects and increase their competitiveness in the long run.