I am currently gathering ideas for an interesting research topic in the field of Corporate Sustainability / CSR / CSR-Communication. Can any of the experts recommend some inspiring and relevant topics, that would be worth exploring in a PhD-study?
CSR variable can be both Dependent and Independent varibles --it's up to what would you like to study in accordance with literature lens and empirical research supports.
E.g. CSR has a positive influence on innovation and corporate performace
According to me there is still a lot of myths about CSR. In my opinion responsibility cannot be studied as an activity outside the organization's integral work by focusing only on the community development work. One must show the relevance of CSR for the internal, intermediate and external levels of corporate activity because at every level social stakeholders are involved whether as shareholder, employee, supplier, consumer et al. Therefore a study of this would be interesting.
CSR has many differences for substantive definitions, which create problems for measuring CSR activities of many countries, so you can write about the substance of CSR activities
I propose a research topic in determining the determinants of the application and non-application of the principles of corporate social responsibility, business ethics in the operations of commercial banks, more or less reliable customer service, using the advantage in terms of information asymmetry, etc., and the impact of these more or less prosocial strategies on brand image and brand recognition bank, development and changes in the market share in sales of certain types of banking products and financial results of specific analyzed financial institutions. I conduct research on this issue (shadow banking, specific banking procedures incompatible with CSR and their impact on the genesis of the global financial crisis 2008) and I encourage scientific cooperation.