Exploring CSR performance as a proxy for competitive ad-vantage across sectors in the Central European countries

Research background: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) demonstrates that a business should be interested in broader social issues rather than on merely those impacting profit margins. Thus, enterprises across all sectors need to focus on the pillars of CSR, which can ultimately give them a competitive advantage. Previous research papers have focused mainly on the level of CSR in particular industries or how CSR activities are communicated in these industries. Purpose of the article: The paper focuses on demonstrating the level of CSR performance in the chosen central European countries in the context of corporate earnings and specifying the impact of the economic sectors on the level of CSR performance, which is mapped by the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) score. Methods: This study used the ESG score, an indicator of the level of CSR performance, and financial and accounting data of 490 publicly traded enterprises from Central Europe. It also applied correlation analysis, the Kruskal–Wallis test and cluster agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Findings & value added: The results have proved that the CSR performance of central European enterprises is positively associated with the level of corporate earnings in all NACE sectors. This knowledge broadens the existing literature on this topic. The study also revealed statistically significant differences in the development of the CSR concept across the sectors. Then, cluster agglomerative hierarchical clustering identified the groups of sectors with homogenous approaches to CSR. This provides information on the homogeneity or heterogeneity of CSR performance across different industries, which is useful information not only for investors and other stakeholders, but also for researchers.