Leaders or Followers? Individual‐Level Sustainability Orientations on Corporate Social Responsibility and Their Theoretical Drivers

Abstract

Although the literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) increasingly recognizes the coexistence of multiple theoretical frameworks at the organizational level, little is known about how individual professionals internalize and combine these frameworks in managerial practice. This study fills this gap by analyzing management engineers, who play a key role in translating corporate sustainability strategies into operational decisions. Through a sequential, two‐phase research design, an exploratory analysis based on Principal Component Analysis and K‐means clustering identifies two distinct profiles (Sustainability Leaders and Sustainability Followers) which were subsequently validated through a second questionnaire, in which respondents self‐identified with the profiles and evaluated five organizational theories. The results show that the two groups do not differ in digital skills, which are now widespread across the board, but rather in how they integrate sustainability, stakeholder engagement, and systems thinking into their decisions. A regression analysis reveals that Stakeholder Theory positively explains membership in the Leader profile, while Institutional Theory characterizes the Follower profile. This study contributes to research on CSR by demonstrating that sustainability orientations at the individual level are based on distinct theoretical frameworks, thereby extending the analysis of CSR from organizational strategies to the professionals responsible for their implementation.