CSR focus under competitive pressure: The role of national institutions

How does competitive pressure shape CSR strategy, and does this relationship vary across national institutional contexts? We challenge the prevailing binary framing that competitive pressure either promotes or suppresses CSR by arguing that competition reshapes how firms configure their CSR portfolios, not merely how much they engage. We introduce CSR focus strategy: a firm's selective emphasis on specific CSR dimensions while deliberately de-emphasizing others, allowing simultaneous differentiation and cost-economization through CSR under some conditions. Employing multilevel linear modeling (MLM) on a global dataset of 41 countries comprising 2294 firms from 2002 to 2020, we demonstrate that competitive intensity drives adoption of CSR focus strategy. Critically, this effect is contingent on national market-supporting institutions and firm size, where CSR focus strategies are most pronounced in institutionally weaker environments characterized by limited property rights protection and among smaller firms with limited stakeholder relational capital and opportunities. Further analyses reveal two subtypes, namely CSR excellence and CSR distinction , reflecting different portfolio configurations under competition. By establishing that institutional context shapes firms' CSR portfolio configuration under competition, our study advances international business research and reconciles opposing theoretical positions in the competition-CSR debate. Collectively, these findings extend the emerging portfolio-based view of CSR into the cross-country competitive domain.