Diving into a Developing Country’s Business Landscape: Uncovering Managerial Intentions for Corporate Socially Responsible Practices—The Case of Romania

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach from a managerial point of view has become a topic of interest especially in the European ex-Communist countries. This paper explores the intentions of Romanian managers of small and medium-sized enterprises and multinational corporations operating in Romania to implement corporate socially responsible practices (CSRPs). To this end, a quantitative research methodology based on an online survey was employed, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results show that the research model based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) has been validated. The values of composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha exceed 0.7, the value of average variance extracted exceeds 0.5, while the values of average block variance inflation factor and average full collinearity are below 3.3. The findings also indicate that the intention of managers to integrate CSRP within their business organizations is mostly influenced by the stakeholder pressure, suggesting that the attainment of social approval is a crucial driver of responsible behavior, rather than other constructs related to the TPB. The study concludes that while negative attitudes towards CSR do not significantly affect managers’ intentions to engage in CSRP, positive attitudes exert a favorable influence.