The ethical behaviour and social responsibility of private companies, and in particular large corporations, is an important area of enquiry in contemporary social, economic and political thinking. In the past, a company's behaviour would be considered responsible as long as it stayed within the law of the society in which it operated or existed. Although this may be necessary, it is no longer sufficient. In this paper, we examine an energy company's response to an ethical incident in New Zealand which prompted different responses across the country about the role of business in society. Thus, we argue that when a corporation is accused of unethical behaviour, executives of the company are usually compelled to offer responses to defend their actions and corporate image. Further, we use communicative response model, social issue life cycle theory, and organisational learning, to analyse the incident and how the company responded. Using social issues life cycle theory and organisational learning theory, we demonstrate that sustained pressure can potentially trigger a change of strategy that may serve to improve the ethical posture of a corporation and thereby improve the corporate image long term. We conclude that, although corporations may understand the significance of social issues to the performance and success of their business, this same understanding does not always translate into meaningful social action.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives adopted by Chinese firms during the outbreak of COVID-19. Facing this unknown, unexpected and devastating disease, Chinese corporations demonstrated their CSR in different approaches. The purpose of this paper is to explore how CSR influences the decisions of the corporations that respond to a severe incident and how corporations can achieve their mission or strategic objectives by responding to a serious incident. Design/methodology/approach Based on secondary data and thematic analysis, this paper examines six Chinese corporations which are the leading firms in their respective industries. Findings This paper finds that firms adopted a mixed approach to conducting their CSR initiatives, including altruistic, strategic and citizenship CSR initiatives. This paper also confirms that strategic CSR initiatives were in line with the five dimensions of strategic CSR including centrality, specificity, proactivity, visibility and voluntarism. In addition, this paper also shows that a company could create its competitive advantage by carrying out CSR initiatives that are able to strengthen its value chain activities or the competitive context. This is based on the partnership built by the firms with their stakeholders to recognize the shared value. Practical implications This paper shows the implication that business leaders should understood the role of a business in society and the importance of stakeholders’ expectations. The underlying philosophy is that CSR could strengthen the resilience of society; business organizations need to operate in a healthy society. Originality/value This paper provides insights of Chinese corporations responding to a severe social incident. It highlights the strategic perspective of CSR initiatives and the linkage between CSR activities and a firm’s competitive advantage.

Despite the enormous amount of academic work contributed to research on competitive advantage, a comprehensive framework that includes both internal and external attributes of the firm still remains undeveloped. This paper seeks to use a stakeholder perspective to examine the source of competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be viewed as a firm's ability to contribute more customer value than its competitors. It endeavors to drive the largest gap between the buyer's willingness-to-pay and the supplier's opportunity cost. If stakeholders can be categorized by their relative potential on threat and cooperation, strategies for managing stakeholders are used to maximize their cooperative potential and minimize their potential threat so as to capitalize on value creation.

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Competitive advantage and stakeholder management are two important research streams that have attracted much attention during the past few decades. Distinctive approaches to studies on competitive advantage exhibit differences in their assumptions, units of analysis, and strategic implications; however, none of them can individually explain the whole concept of competitive advantage. Although competitive advantage is the core issue of strategic management in which stakeholder management is rooted, the two topics have developed seemingly independently in the literature. By focusing on value creation, value protection, and value capture, this paper suggests a theoretical framework that employs a stakeholder perspective, linking three approaches on competitive advantage-the resource-based view, the relational view, and the activity-position view. This framework provides insight to an incomplete picture of competitive advantage in the extant literature.Keywords: competitive advantage, stakeholder management, the resource-based view, the relational view