Industrial Clusters and the Institutionalization of Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries: The Role of International Donor Funding

In this article, we make a contribution to the embryonic literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in industrial clusters that are integrated into global value chains in the developing world. In doing so, we conceptualize and empirically investigate the role of donor funding in institutionalizing CSR within developing country clusters that are tied into global value chains. Using the Sialkot football manufacturing cluster in Pakistan as our case study, we argue that donor-funded support of CSR in developing country clusters are likely to be ineffective if they do not take context specificities sufficiently into account, are poorly designed and implemented, in addition to not being sustained over a longer period of time.