A Tale of Two Corporations: A Comparison between Performance of Domestic and Multinational Corporations on Corporate Social Responsibility in a Developing Muslim Country

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a major strategic tool in sustainable development, environment protection, and ethical alignment has gained considerable amount of attention worldwide. Developing countries, however, are still at the early stage in using CSR and especially for developing Muslim countries, whose CSR concept sometimes are confused with philanthropic responsibilities. This study therefore focuses specifically on a representative developing Muslim country, Pakistan to examine CSR. It piques our research interests that there are differences between multinational corporations (MNCs) and domestic companies in the CSR investment in Pakistan, and we compare how these differences in CSR influencing financial performance, net profits, and assets by using the combined methodologies of qualitative content analysis and quantitative regression analysis to investigate whether the differences are statistically significant drawing on the corporate social model. Analyzing 111 domestic companies and MNCs in Pakistan during 2020, we establish statistically significant differences in financial performance, net profits, and assets. Specifically, we find that domestic companies exhibit lower levels of CSR investment compared to MNCs, and they under-perform in terms of financial performance, net profits, and assets. This study contributes to the literature on CSR and the corporate social model, enhancing understanding of CSR development in numerous developing Muslim countries.