Purpose India has recently entered mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) spend era. It is important to unravel the pressures of CSR implementation in the Indian context to understand how a better fit between business strategy and CSR spend can be achieved. This study aims to validate a model that integrates pressures, CSR implementation and financial performance through reputation within the institutional theory framework. Design/methodology/approach It is based on a questionnaire survey of 162 top-level and middle-level CSR managers in India and semi-structured interviews with eight top-level executives. Findings The study concludes that local community, government, peers and media are important institutional pressures of CSR implementation in India. Reputation partially mediates the relationship between CSR implementation and financial performance. Practical implications The study findings can help managers to know which stakeholders (government, media, peers and local community) are exerting statistically significant institutional pressures and how CSR initiatives be designed to cater to their requirements. Though CSR spend is mandatory in India, a strategic orientation towards it would enable the firms to derive value for the stakeholders associated with the business. Originality/value Relationship between pressures of CSR and CSR implementation has not yet been explored in the Indian context. Such a relationship tells us why is CSR taken up and influence of which of the pressure groups is considered important while implementing CSR. The study will help to understand the relationship between CSR–reputation–financial performance as perceived by Indian managers and to assess whether they perceive corporate reputation building as one of the most important outcomes of CSR.

Researchers world over are increasingly realising that use of a theoretical framework is necessary for designing and conducting research on corporate-community relations. There are no empirical studies in India, to the best of our knowledge, which look at Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives of a corporate in local community through theoretical lens. The research questions we examine through this study are – firstly, how institutional pressure at the level of local community drives CSR practices of a company and secondly, to assess how community has perceived these CSR initiatives. To answer the same, the researchers studied CSR practices of Cairn India in Barmer region of Rajasthan as a single case within the theoretical framework provided by the institutional theory. This empirical study, based on interviews with employees and NGO partners of Cairn and perceptual study in the community, offers an on-the-ground glimpse of how the company is implementing CSR initiatives and associated challenges it is facing. The findings testify that managing local community expectations has certainly helped Cairn India to integrate community expectations into its CSR strategy. The study brings to light the fact Government and NGOs are important drivers of CSR at the local community level in developing countries like India.