Corporate social responsibility and its counterpart, corporate social irresponsibility are topics of increasing importance in business research. Despite the proliferation of recent publications addressing these two concepts, fundamental knowledge of how they are related to each other is unclear. We narrow this gap by undertaking a systematic review of 34 relevant studies collected in an open time span. The narrative analysis of empirical evidence resulted in an integrative framework of three core mechanisms underlying the dynamic relationships between corporate social responsibility and irresponsibility: insurance, penance, and trade-offs. Based on this framework, we provide a future research agenda to advance our understanding on these two corporate behaviors.
