Sharing is caring: incorporating the concept of 'sharing' to reclassify corporate social responsibility initiatives

Organisations are increasingly adopting Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives (CSRIs) with the aim of contributing to social and environmental issues and by so doing, to also gain strategic advantage in the market place. There is an array of different activities that fall within this endeavour which are commonly classified as social, environmental or economic initiatives. Other classifications are similarly based on the activities without empirical confirmation of consumers' perspectives of CSRIs. In this paper, we further develop the standard type classifications and incorporate Belk's theory of sharing as a mechanism to incorporate consumers' views. The proposed classifications were then tested on a sample of 358 adults across Australia. The refined and validated classification of CSRIs is presented, and implications for organisations are discussed.