The theoretical foundations and scientific methodological approaches to the management system improvement of Corporate Social Responsibility and competitiveness at an industrial enterprise are developed in the thesis.
The first section of the thesis systemizes the historical formation of CSR concepts and theories. It is established that the development of CSR passed through valuable academic and practical milestones. It is substantiated that the formation of the methodological principles led to the practical development of implementing CSR for enterprises. The section provided a comparative analysis for the basic concepts of CSR. The longitudinal content analysis identified the main indicators of assessing the competitiveness of an enterprise.
The second section of the thesis examines the interaction between the principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the sustainable development goals. On the national level, according to investigation toward ethical, political, ecological, and social international indicators, it is found that Ukraine achieved slight progress comparing to other countries in the European Union. It is realized that there is a need to adhere to CSR principles starting from industrial enterprise for achieving rapid progress. On the example of the formed sample from 24 enterprises it is found that there is a positive correlation between adhering to CSR principles and the rapid progress regarding some competitiveness indicators. The enterprises significantly recorded an improvement in the competitiveness indicators concerning other relevant companies operates in the same industry.
The third section of the thesis includes an analytical hierarchical approach to determine the most adequate CSR model for industrial enterprises operating in an emerging economy context. The results showed that the TBL model conditions provide an effective and high positive impact on economic, ethical, political, social, and environmental areas for enterprises operating in an emerging economy context. The author formed a consolidated management process model framework for integrating international certified management standards of CSR principles in an industrial enterprise. The author used the internal-external matrix to determine the growth level of an enterprise. The results showed that there are three basic scenarios for implementing CSR in industrial enterprises.
The scientific novelty of the conducted research is the development of theoretical provisions and scientifically grounded recommendations for the management of implementing corporate social responsibility at an industrial enterprise.
Enhancement for the theoretical and methodological principles of sustainable development strategy. Unlike existing approaches, the principles have been integrated with the scope of CSR, the UN Global Compact, and the Sustainable Development Goals. Such integration significantly clarifies the use of sustainable development strategy at both the enterprise level and the state level.
Periodization for the evaluation of CSR methodology has been further developed. Disparate from existing approaches, disturbing and analyzing theoretical and qualitative changes in the CSR field allow to envisage conceivable future for improving theoretical and practical aspects of CSR.
Ameliorate the theoretical and methodological approaches of CSR for the dynamic assessment of enterprise competitiveness. Discrepant to existing approaches, such an assessment provides an apparent comparison for the rate of change of enterprise competitiveness before and after the official adoption of the concept of CSR with the industry averages;
Adherence to set of indicators for assessing the competitiveness of the enterprise has been carried out. However, and distinctly from existing researches, it was conducted via longitudinal content analysis of scient-metric databases of Scopus and Web of Science. Such demonstration embraces the reliability and validity of assessing the competitiveness of the enterprise;
Reliance on theoretical and methodological bases to choose the most appropriate model of CSR in accordance with the economic development level of the country. Despite other investigations toward this dilemma, the analytical hierarchy approach has been used, where it allows to target an appropriate CSR model for emerging countries.
The conceptual provision for the implementation system and the managerial system of CSR at the enterprise level has been developed through a clear business process model. Heterogeneously to the existing approaches, the conceptual provision provides a preliminary definition for developing the enterprise development scenario using a matrix method.
Key words: corporate social responsibility, competitiveness, stakeholders, sustainable development, UN Global Compact, strategy, management.
