Abstract:
Growth of economies in the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)
are estimated to outpace that of developed nations by 2050. However this comes at a high
cost of energy consumption which is in contrast with global sustainability and Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) goals. New forms of open innovation such as Corporate Venture
Capital (CVC) programmes may offer solutions to persistent CSR challenges. However, there
is a lack of research at the intersection of CSR outcomes and CVC programmes, especially
outside of developed markets. This study addressed the gap by investigating if CVC
programmes are effective at improving CSR outcomes of firms in BRICS nations. A multiple
regression analysis was conducted on the environmental and social components of CSR for
171 companies in India and South Africa. The results show that CVC programmes positively
impact companies’ social outcomes but has no immediate impact on its environmental
outcomes. The study further contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the
environmental and social outcomes have significant impacts on each other. Additional
contributions include proving that governance scores influence the social outcomes and that
the industry type has an impact on the environmental scores. However, firm location has no
impact on the environmental or social outcomes in this study.
