The interplay between corporate social responsibility and knowledge management strategies for innovation capability development in dynamic environments

2.1 Environmental dynamism and corporate social responsibility

Environmental dynamism refers to the intensity, regularity and unpredictability of environmental changes in an industry (Zhang et al., 2021). Dynamic environments are characterized by technological discontinuity, changes in customer preferences, the entry of new competitors and fluctuations in product demand or the supply of raw materials, among other factors (Bierly and Daly, 2007). Spital and Bickford (1992) point out that environmental dynamism depends critically on the speed of change for product technology or technological advances in processes. Wijbenga and Van Witteloostuijn (2007) also consider changes in customers’ preferences and competitor technologies as main features of dynamic environments, which suggests that customer and competitors’ actions are more difficult to predict in dynamic than in stable environments.

The type of environment in which the company operates affects managers’ choices related to CSR and innovation strategies (Bierly and Daly, 2007; Jansen et al., 2009; Wijbenga and Van Witteloostuijn, 2007; Zhang et al., 2021). Haleblian et al. (2012) assert that, in dynamic environments, the ability to identify new opportunities and to exploit them through technological innovation is a key issue for achieving competitive advantages. Since technological advancements usually disseminate quickly to competitors in dynamic industries, firms must repeatedly search for new opportunity windows to be successful in the long term (Bierly and Daly, 2007). According to the dynamic capabilities approach, companies can shape their operational capabilities to meet the needs of changing environments (Teece et al., 1997), so this paper proposes that CSR could be helpful to companies to get knowledge about their stakeholders’ needs and preferences, using this knowledge to explore new opportunities for developing new products/processes.

Previous research suggests that a company’s CSR commitment and performance depend on the context in which CSR is performed (Achi et al., 2022; Martinez-Conesa et al., 2017). When a firm’s environment is highly dynamic, technological changes will make its existing knowledge rapidly obsolete, thus reducing performance (Sun and Cui, 2014; Zhang et al., 2021). By adopting green technical processes or, in general, CSR practices, firms can reduce manufacturing costs or they could benefit from differentiation advantages by integrating social and ecological concepts into manufacturing (Sun and Cui, 2014). However, when companies deal with low levels of technological dynamism, they can use an incremental approach to improve green and social innovation rather than implementing systematic change through green processes or CSR activities (Zhang et al., 2021). From this perspective, this paper considers that companies that expand their CSR commitment as a response to environmental change are able to establish highly solid relationships with stakeholders, which allows them to access to valuable knowledge that is difficult for competitors to imitate, to explore and exploit new business opportunities. For example, the adoption of green CSR practices denotes company’s environmental responsibility, which may increase stakeholders’ willingness to share more knowledge as a response to those positive efforts to improve a sustainability image (Guoyou et al., 2013; Shafique et al., 2021). Cooperative links with stakeholders such as suppliers or consumers make it possible for firms to access a wide range of valuable knowledge that helps them to understand changes and deal with environmental uncertainty (Sun and Cui, 2014). CSR could thus be seen as a fertile ground for dealing with sustainability issues by means of innovation (Porter and Kramer, 2006).

Specific environmental elements, such as regulatory measures and customer pressures, can promote organizational responses by developing green innovation (Huang et al., 2016; Lin and Ho, 2011). Huang et al. (2016) state that regulatory pressures have a positive impact on employees training and play a direct role in green innovation performance, while customer pressure has a positive impact on research and development (R&D) efforts and collaboration networks. In this regard, Zhang et al. (2021) assert that firms are reluctant to develop innovation efforts in relatively stable environments owing to inherent uncertainties and risks associated with green process innovation, referred as “the process innovation that is related to energy-saving, pollution prevention, waste recycling, or no toxicity.” Similarly, our paper establishes that a stable environment does not especially motivate managers to develop CSR leading to increase costs and risks in the short term. However, when managers perceive rapid or/and unexpected changes in the environment, they could be highly committed to CSR practices as the company needs to obtain valuable knowledge from its stakeholders to understand those changes and adapt the firm to the new situation.

Research on organizational adaptation identifies interactions with specific stakeholders (e.g. customers and suppliers) as channels that allow firms to understand dynamic environments. According to Zhang et al. (2021), in a highly dynamic environment customers’ preferences and demands, as well as competitors’ market strategies, change quickly, requiring companies to pay considerable attention and allocate extensive resources to cope with these changes. In this context, companies adopt CSR practices to exploit short-term opportunities and to respond proactively to the changing marketplace. In addition, proactive CSR strategies confer environmental legitimacy to companies and improve their reputation, which are important social assets that reduce market fluctuations (Achi et al., 2022; Eiadat et al., 2008; Rothenhoefer, 2019; Sun and Cui, 2014).

In contrast, when market dynamism is low, companies tend to make minor adjustments to manufacturing processes and marginal environmental commitments. A stable market environment allows companies to adopt standardized approaches to environmental decision-making and to rely on routinized methods for problem-solving. In other words, the routinization of business operations in stable markets makes it difficult for companies to develop highly proactive CSR practices. Moreover, if customer demand for environmentally friendly measures is relatively stable, the adoption of green process innovation can lead to high costs that are difficult to compensate by means of manufacturing. Consequently, high potential costs dissuade companies from adopting green processes and proactive CSR practices in stable markets (Zhang et al., 2021).

Pressures from external environments (e.g. market demands, green technologies or environmental regulation) are reported to have positive impacts on firms’ commitment to green or environmental process (Doś and Pattarin, 2021; Lin and Ho, 2011; Yu et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2021). However, we also find other results on the relationship between environmental characteristics and CSR responses. For example, Eiadat et al. (2008) tried to justify that government environmental regulation, managerial environmental concerns and perceived importance of stakeholder pressures positively influenced environmental innovation strategies. However, they found a negative relationship between government environmental regulation and environmental innovation strategy, and they did not find significant effects of perceived stakeholder pressures on company green and social behaviors. Other studies even show environmental dynamism and volatility as barriers for green practices (CSR) adoption (Achi et al., 2022; Lin and Ho, 2011). For example, Lin and Ho (2011) tried to prove that environmental factors (customer pressure, regulatory pressure, governmental support and environmental uncertainty) had a positive influence on green practice adoption for Chinese logistics companies. However, they found that environmental dynamism and uncertainty have significantly negative influences on companies’ green practices adoption. An explanation of these results is provided by Achi et al. (2022), who assert that environmental volatility prevents firms from acquiring or enhancing the necessary resources to develop proenvironmental capabilities, such as those linked to CSR and green process innovation. Firms in these kinds of environments are forced to devote little time and effort to develop these capabilities, which, in turn, negatively affects organizational performance. In their research, they showed that perceived environmental volatility negatively moderates the effect of CSR on micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises performance through green process innovation. For all the former reasons, the nature of the relationship between environmental dynamism and CSR practices demands further exploration.

The existing research on CSR highlights environment features as an important factor to consider when setting a particular CSR strategy (Achi et al., 2022; Nazri et al., 2020; Sun and Cui, 2014; Zhang et al., 2021). Managers should thus pay attention to such features, and in particular, to dynamism, when they design the firm’s strategy in terms of CSR (Achi et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2021). From the former arguments and following a cognitive-decision and a dynamic capabilities approach, this paper proposes that the more dynamic is the perception about the business’s environment, the stronger will be the firm’s commitment on CSR since building strong relationships and social networks with specific stakeholders will allow it to gain valuable knowledge about changes to adapt the firm to the new situation. Companies could thus employ CSR to create dynamic capabilities to better adapt to changes in the environment. We, thus, formulate the following hypothesis:

2.2 Corporate social responsibility, knowledge management strategies and innovation capabilities

CSR integration into KM and innovation strategies is a dynamic process in which the implementation of socially responsible actions facilitates the detection, assessment and analysis of changes in a company’s stakeholders’ needs and expectations, generating positive effects such as conflict control, confidence improvement and risk reduction (Donate and Guadamillas, 2011; Ji et al., 2019; Shafique et al., 2021). Nevertheless, the relationship between CSR and KM strategies has rarely been analyzed by the management literature, especially the dilemma between the selection of exploratory and exploitative strategies and its relationship with CSR dimensions as a determinant of innovation capabilities development.

On the one hand, KM exploration refers to the search, acquisition and creation of new products, resources, knowledge and opportunities (Jensen and Clausen, 2017; March, 1991; McGrath, 2001). It is associated to radical changes, learning through experimentation and terms such as search, diversity, adaptability, risk-taking, experimentation, flexibility, innovation and long-term orientation (Eriksson, 2013, p. 334). KM exploitation, on the other hand, refers to the refinement and use of existing products, resources, knowledge and competencies (Jensen and Clausen, 2017; Stettner and Lavie, 2014), involving an alignment to existing company conditions and constraints, efficiency and short-term orientation (Eriksson, 2013, p. 334). Companies focused on KM exploration (i.e. the search of new knowledge) usually entail higher costs and risks than on KM exploitation, but their interest is in long-term success by creating new competencies and skills resulting in radical innovation (Benner and Tushman, 2015; Brix, 2020; Clauss et al., 2021; McGrath, 2001). Nevertheless, firms focused on KM exploitation use their current competencies to generate revenues in the short term by improving existing products, services and processes (Brix, 2020; Lavie et al., 2010). Firms need to adapt incrementally its products to customer needs, and their processes to technical and technological advances to maintain a steady flow of income from current markets. In any case, a company should be aware that an excessive focus on knowledge exploitation can result in short-term success but long-term stagnation and failure (Eriksson, 2013; Mathias et al., 2018).

Managing knowledge exploitation and exploration becomes challenging when sustainability requirements and a firm’s CSR commitment are introduced into its corporate and business strategies (Demir et al., 2021). Innovation and KM can allow companies to generate economic rents, but in sustainable contexts, it should also support the firm to find solutions based on new processes, products and services to fulfill stakeholders’ needs (Hull and Rothenberg, 2008; Mishra, 2017). From a stakeholder’s view, business organizations should assume responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders and communities, as well as the environment (Ismail, 2009; Kraus et al., 2020). Knowledge on a company stakeholders’ goals, needs and preferences should thus guide both exploration and exploitation processes to develop sustainable innovation capabilities (Shafique et al., 2021). Moreover, a firm should be able to manage the duality between short-term and long-term preferences, considering its available organizational systems and future requirements for sustainable innovation (Minoja, 2012).

In the past few years, the interaction between CSR and KM strategies has been shown in several research papers. For example, Costa et al. (2015) developed a model in which CSR moderated the relationship between the firm’s technological orientation and exploratory/exploitative innovation, and exploratory/exploitative innovation and export performance. Their findings revealed that while firm’s commitment on CSR relates positively with exploratory innovation, the effect of on exploitative innovation is nonsignificant. Moreover, while CSR contributes to enhance the impact of exploratory innovation on export performance, there is a detrimental impact on the effect of exploitative innovation on export performance. More recently, Shafique et al. (2021) analyzed CSR as a moderating variable on the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and green entrepreneurial orientation, finding that the joint effect of CSR and ambidexterity broaden learning and innovativeness effects, encouraging green entrepreneurial orientations, especially in sustainable, high-intensive CSR contexts.

Other authors tried to be more specific by exploring the effect of individual types or categories of CSR on knowledge exploration and exploitation. For example, Ji et al. (2019) found that proactive CSR is related to exploratory innovation, while reactive CSR relates to exploitative innovation. The results seem to suggest that implementing proactive CSR helps firms to capture new market opportunities by addressing new environmental and social issues. Moreover, implementing reactive CSR (oriented to the short term and equated to the economic CSR dimension) helps firms to acquire legitimacy and reputation, which makes easier for them the access to external resources such as talent, along with financial and governmental support. These findings show that different approaches to CSR result in specific outcomes reflected in innovation “postures,” which are needed for the survival of the firm both in the short- and the long-term.

In a similar vein to the research by Ji et al. (2019), our paper suggests that a KM focus on collecting, assimilating and exploiting knowledge from relationships with stakeholders will allow the company to improve its innovation capabilities. Moreover, by complying with the expectations of stakeholders and building shared values firms create effective channels to collect insights, information and trusted knowledge, which they can use to develop innovation capabilities by means of KM exploration and exploitation strategies. Our view is that the economic CSR dimension will have an impact on short-term innovation, while social and environmental CSR dimensions will rather impact long-term innovation. Thus, this paper posits that the economic dimension of CSR will be directly related to a KM exploitation strategy (focused on short-term goals and immediate innovation outcomes based on refining existing capabilities), while CSR social and environmental dimensions will be related to a KM exploration strategy (focused on long-term goals). The perceptions of stakeholders on environmental and social issues can be very useful for exploring new ways of satisfying their objectives by developing new technologies. Likewise, knowledge about stakeholders’ preferences in the economic area can provide the firm with a short-term approach to innovation and lead the company to incrementally exploiting existing assets in current markets (for example, work- and family-life balance and teleworking are human resource management practices able to improve company’s productivity). The economic dimension of CSR would be thus related to policies that have an important influence on employee and process improvement, being more likely to contribute to short-term productivity performance than long-term outcomes.

When a firm tries to achieve short- and medium-term objectives of sustainability, especially of financial nature, efforts on innovation are likely to be more oriented toward KM exploitative strategies than explorative ones (i.e. to take advantage of existing knowledge) (Benner and Tushman, 2015; Mathias et al., 2018). Hence, by deploying economic CSR activities, responsible companies improve their image and reputation to raise funds, get partners and attract highly qualified employees. From this perspective, CSR efforts also help companies to retain talent and creativity (Nyuur et al., 2022; Porter and Kramer, 2006), accumulating human capital and improving innovation capabilities (Surroca et al., 2010). Therefore, the economic dimension of CSR (e.g. reducing waste management costs, improving employees’ working conditions, solving customers’ complaints or improving product safety and quality standards) is related to KM exploitation initiatives.

“Good” relationships with stakeholders can thus be essential for innovative firms (Guoyou et al., 2013) from a knowledge-based view of the firm. According to Guadamillas and Donate (2011), social and environmental issues are an essential part of innovation, along with KM strategies that involve proactive or exploratory attitudes of a company to respond flexibly to changes in the environment. In this regard, we propose that knowledge collected from stakeholders beyond traditional economic activities of the company, such as social and environmental areas of CSR, which need long-term investments (Sánchez and Benito-Hernández, 2015; Torugsa et al., 2013) and a highly proactive vision from managers, will positively influence KM exploration in the firm. Conversely, companies focused on CSR aspects linked to the economic dimension (the most basic level of CSR), as for example, activities to reduce lawsuits, increase employee loyalty or improve customer loyalty by selling highly secure products, tend to influence to a greater extent KM exploitation, which is a strategy highly oriented toward short-term and low-risk goals achievement (Eriksson, 2013; Mathias et al., 2018). From these arguments, we establish the following hypotheses:

Literature on KM generally shows that there are positive effects of both knowledge exploitation and exploration on innovation capabilities (Donate and Guadamillas, 2011). In the ambit of CSR, previous studies show positive impacts of market knowledge acquisition (i.e. knowledge from employees, suppliers and customers) on innovation capability development (Bocquet et al., 2013; Shafique et al., 2021). Moreover, a company’s ability to learn has long been recognized as a competitive imperative for innovation, especially in the context of strategic sustainability behavior (Brix, 2020).

As previously explained, CSR practices can be crucial sources of acquisition and development of strategic resources and capabilities, but they can have a different impact on performance in terms of strategic purpose, period of materialization and scope. In any case, strategic CSR should be proactive, including voluntary business practices related to economic, social and environmental dimensions (Torugsa et al., 2013). The consideration of the three CSR dimensions provides a business model of value creation, which contributes to creating competitive advantages (Kraus et al., 2020). This business model is based on the development of sustainable innovation by anticipating economic and social trends and external regulations (Groza et al., 2011). The implementation of proactive CSR can thus help firms to capture new market opportunities (explore) and take advantage of the existing ones (exploit) by addressing economic, environmental and social issues. This will allow them to improve their innovation capabilities based on routines about how to explore and exploit knowledge collected about stakeholders’ needs and goals.Company stakeholders can provide a firm with valuable information and knowledge about their needs, preferences and goals, so innovation is likely to emerge as a business response to these aspects. By creating links with its stakeholders by means of CSR activities, a firm has access to networks and new points of view about the marketplace (Mahmoud and Hinson, 2012). Since these networks are sources of information and knowledge resources, openness to knowledge flows is a predictor of a company’s innovation performance (Fey and Birkinshaw, 2005). When companies perceive changes in their stakeholders’ needs, they will search for new solutions through KM exploration and exploitation strategies. As D’Amato and Roome (2009, p. 423) point out, “CSR is understood to arise from an increased awareness that change outside the company requires management attention,” which denotes that commitment to CSR initiatives will lead the firm to develop innovation capabilities. In general, knowledge from a firm’s stakeholders’ utility functions can enhance its ability to develop innovation capabilities from KM exploration and exploitation strategies. We thus formulate the following hypotheses of the study:

3.1 Sample

The study’s population includes 726 companies related to renewable energy activities in Spain. Specifically, six activities were considered: energy generation; manufacturing of technological components; marketing and export of components; engineering activities; energy consulting; and installation and maintenance activities. Secondary data from these companies were obtained from two Spanish specialized directories (IDAE [1] and the Directorio Especializado en Empresas de Energías Renovables [2] from the Spanish Industry Ministry). There are three main reasons to use this set of related activities in this study:

1. this is a highly dynamic sector, intensive in innovation and knowledge, due to its technological focus on continuous product and process development (APPA, 2021);

2. its activities are very sensitive to CSR activities since their products, processes and services have high impacts in economic, social and environmental terms; and

3. their great importance for the Spanish economy, in which their contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) [3] was 1.05% in 2020 (APPA, 2021).

These reasons, along with the importance of renewable energies to achieve sustainable development goals (e.g. within the context of the 2030 political agenda), and the interest and impact of these activities in respect of social welfare benefits, led us to select this sector as a favorable context to develop our research.

We designed a questionnaire after carrying out an extensive literature review, developing and adapting existing measures for perceived environmental dynamism, CSR, KM exploration and exploitation activities and innovation capabilities. An online survey was launched, and an e-mail was sent to the companies included in the population along with an invitation to participate in the study and a direct link to the questionnaire, which was encouraged to be responded by a member of the top management team. We collected 76 valid questionnaires, representing 10.47% of the response rate (see Table 1). Although it is not a large sample, we were limited by the population size due to the selection of a specific sector and the typical difficulty of getting access to targeted companies and top management. Moreover, the percentage of response is consistent with conventional research with surveys in management (10%–20%), where the target is normally the company’s top managers, and there are not incentives to complete the questionnaire beyond cooperation in academic research (Wijbenga and Van Witteloostuijn, 2007); however, this does not suggest the presence of sampling biases (Baruch and Holtom, 2008). Likewise, as the study’s main objective was to test a predictive model, and we had enough observations (in comparison to the model’s variables) to apply the Smart partial least squares (PLS) technique following the recommendation by Hair et al. (2012), we considered this size as suitable for our research purposes. Finally, and to test for nonresponse bias, differences between respondents and nonrespondents were examined regarding the control variable of the study. A t-test did not show a significant difference in relation to company size (t = 0.698; p < 0.91).

3.2 Measures

3.3 Common variance method test

The following solutions were used in this study to control the common method bias. First, by using multi-item scales without a reference to the constructs, we offered anonymity about independent and dependent variables to the respondents. We also used some reversed scales to prevent an excessive tendency to mark similar scale points by the respondents, to alleviate common method bias. Furthermore, the complex data relationships based on indirect and mediating effects that we propose in this study helped to alleviate possible common method bias concerns since the respondents were unable to guess the research hypotheses or respond in a socially desirable manner when they were completing the questionnaire, which would lead to spurious findings (Ko et al., 2021). Finally, we used statistical remedies (Podsakoff et al., 2003). A Harman test was applied to the questionnaire variables to assess the existence of common method bias for the data set. An exploratory factor analysis (principal components with a varimax rotation) was performed by considering the seven main constructs of the model (environmental dynamism, environmental CSR, social CSR, economic CSR, KM exploration, KM exploitation, innovation capabilities), with results showing the existence of eight factors with eigenvalues above 1, explaining 79.02% of the total variance. As the first factor only explains 37.17% of total variance, common method bias does not appear to be a significant concern for the research.

4.1 Measurement model

In this paper, we considered all the constructs as reflective. Following the PLS methodology, we first checked construct reliability along with convergent and discriminant validity of the reflective constructs (Tenenhaus et al., 2005). This analysis assesses whether the theoretical concepts are properly measured by the observed variables or not.

4.2 Construct reliability

The reliability indicators are shown in Table 2. Both the composite reliability index and Cronbach α offer acceptable values, exceeding the recommended levels of 0.8 and 0.7, respectively (Gefen and Straub, 2005).

4.3 Convergent and discriminant validity

Convergent validity is analyzed by means of the loading weight of each indicator (item) on the latent variable (Chin, 1998; Tenenhaus et al., 2005) and the average variance extracted (AVE). The higher the indicator’s loading, the greater the evidence of the construct’s validity. In this paper, we removed eight items (Dynam5, CSRenviron4, CSReco1, CSReco3, CSReco4, CSReco5, CSRsoc1 and Exploit6) [4] since they did not meet the convergence validity criteria of being above 0.6 (Falk and Miller, 1992). Regarding the AVE, all the values are above the recommended threshold of 0.5 (see Table 2). Convergent validity is thus assured for the study’s model. Moreover, for the assessment of discriminant validity, we calculated the square root of the AVE of each latent variable, which it should be greater that the correlations between the rest of latent variables (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) (Table 3).

Furthermore, the heterotrait-monotrait ratio values, based on a comparison of the correlations “heterotrait-heteromethod” and the “monotrait-heteromethod,” also show discriminant validity since all of them are below 0.9 (Henseler et al., 2015).

4.4 Structural model

To assess the structural model, we calculated the path coefficients or standardized regression weights (β). The structural model validity is usually checked by means of: student’s T; significance levels of path coefficients; and R² value for each dependent variable (Figure 1).

The results indicate a significant relationship between environmental dynamism and the three CSR dimensions, indicating that the higher is the level of environmental dynamism perceived by managers, the greater the company’s economic, environmental and social CSR commitment will be. H1 is thus supported. H2 and H3 are also supported, indicating that both environmental and social CSR commitment are significantly related to KM exploration strategies. H4 is also supported by showing a significant association between economic CSR commitment and KM exploitation strategies. The indirect effects of environmental and social CSR on innovation capabilities by means of KM exploration are not significant, but there is a significant indirect effect of CSR (economic) on innovation capabilities through KM exploitation. Thus, H5 and H6 are rejected, but H7 is supported. Finally, size (control variable) does not show a significant influence on innovation capability development.

Regarding the predictive power of the model, the goodness of fit is determined by the strength of each structural relationship, analyzed by means of the R² value (Falk and Miller, 1992) (Table 4). Figure 1 shows that the final dependent variable has a R² value higher than 0.5, which indicates that the model has enough predictive power (Chin, 1998). To assess the model’s predictive relevance, we calculated the Stone–Geisser test (Q²). According to Chin (1998), the predictive power of a construct is relevant if the test offers values of Q² > 0, which is confirmed for the six dependent variables of our model (Table 4). Finally, Table 5 shows direct and indirect effects of the relationships established in the model.

5.1 Managerial implications

From a managerial point of view, this study offers useful insights about the benefits of simultaneously deploying CSR and KM strategies to improve innovation capabilities, especially when managers perceive a highly dynamic environment for their companies. A major implication is that CSR should be considered as an essential component of innovation and business strategies, especially in industries sensitive to environmental and social issues. For example, in renewable energy-related industries (e.g. energy production, equipment and materials, distribution), a great part of technological innovations are focused on recognizing and responding to the needs of stakeholders and reducing the negative impact of the company’s activities on the environment, such as the optimization of waste disposal or the development of product and processes oriented to reduce pollution levels. In this regard, the consideration of environmental and social aspects of CSR in business strategies leads companies toward proactive attitudes toward KM exploration to anticipate or respond flexibly to market changes and their stakeholders’ needs, values and preferences. Our study contributes toward managerial practice by showing that a focus on both KM exploration and exploitation strategies reinforces the firm’s CSR strategy in its three dimensions, which can help the company to improve innovation capabilities, adapting it to highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, our study shows to managers that deliberate efforts on innovation, reflected in a KM exploration orientation, can make the company to find new opportunity sources coming from CSR activities adapted to its stakeholders (D’Amato and Roome, 2009). This paper thus emphasizes that CSR can play a critical role to identify new directions for innovation and the achievement of competitive advantages.

Finally, the results of this study identified positive relationships between CSR commitment and exploratory/exploitative KM as determinants of innovation capabilities in the renewable energy sector in Spain. It highlights the importance of developing CSR initiatives to improve stakeholders’ engagement, allowing the firm to collect strategic knowledge from stakeholders’ networks to be further innovative. This knowledge collected from stakeholders helps companies to detect new opportunities to be exploited and to reduce uncertainty when the environment is highly dynamic. In this regard, companies should introduce CSR to deal with environmental uncertainty and turbulence and develop KM strategies as a proactive response to social, economic and environmental issues.