Advancing transcendent development: An in‐depth review of developmental corporate social responsibility’s value proposition, inhibitions, and inclusive sustainable development prospects

This article offers a methodologically innovative Representative Literature Review of 260 Development‐Oriented Corporate Social Responsibility publications explicating why the nascent domain’s early momentum has seemingly stagnated. Using mixed‐methodological citation network analysis informed by Applied Thematic Analysis research design principles, this in‐depth literature review unearths a causal set of Impediments, leading to Inhibitors restraining Developmental Corporate Social Responsibility’s inclusive sustainable developmental potential. The Seven Impediments and their Seven Inhibitors are ultimately meta‐thematically synthesized into the following Three Inhibitions presently stifling the field: “(I) Ignorance,” “(II) Isomorphism,” and “(III) Inharmony.” Resultantly, this article offers three contributions for addressing these Inhibitions. First, academic scholarship is offered knowledge of how “(I) Ignorance” may be curbed by producing research that retains and builds upon knowledge cumulatively, instead of losing it to fragmentary dissipation born of scholarly incoherence. Second, institutional policymakers are offered pathways for transcending superficial “(II) Isomorphism” by enforcing regulation that engenders ethical business conduct by filling critical institutional voids in developing context jurisdictions. Finally, this review outlines how the Inhibition of “(III) Inharmony” may be pragmatically transcended by harmonizing unconscious ontological dissonance through self‐awareness and reflexive virtue development by synergistically enacting individual Moral Courage, Moral Tact, and Moral Imagination tempered by African Vhuthu/Ubuntu.