Corporate social responsibility, benchmarking, and organizational performance in the petroleum industry: A quality management perspective

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate social responsibility and benchmarking on organizational performance in the petroleum industry. We find that top management support for quality is the main driver of practices associated with corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility appears to have a significant impact on internal quality results (operational performance) but it does not have a significant effect on external quality results (firm performance). We did not find a very strong relationship between benchmarking and internal/external quality results. Our findings suggest that the implementation of corporate social responsibility in the petroleum industry is economically driven. Recommendations for managers and future research have been outlined. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.