Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of World Business journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jwb How institutions affect CSR practices in the Middle East and North Africa: A critical review Dima Jamali a,1 , Tanusree Jain b,1 , Georges Samara c,d, * ,1 , Edwina Zoghbi d a Kamal Shair Endowed Chair in Responsible Leadership, American University of Beirut, Olayan School of Business, Bliss Street, PO Box 11-0236, Beirut, Lebanon b Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, 183 Pearse Street, Dublin D02 F6N2, The Republic of Ireland c University of Sharjah, College of Business Administration, PO Box 27272, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates d American University of Beirut, Olayan School of Business, PO Box 11-0236, Riad El-Solh 1107, Beirut, Lebanon ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Corporate social responsibility Middle East and North Africa MENA Patchwork Institutions Literature review Varieties of institutional systems ABSTRACT This systematic literature review integrates the Varieties of Institutional Systems (VIS) framework and Patchwork Institutions lens to unpack how institutional heterogeneity in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) impacts the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Our review of 154 articles published between 1995–2017 extracts the variegated nature of institutions in MENA countries and sheds light on how country-specific institutional forces affect CSR. Doing so, we take the first step to move away from a monolithic understanding of the institutional effects on CSR in MENA, acknowledging the role that collective actors play in shaping the institutional realities affecting CSR. 1. Introduction Recent research has witnessed the proliferation of efforts focused on clustering countries according to different business and institutional systems (Hall & Soskice, 2001; Jackson & Deeg, 2008; Witt & Redding, 2013) to improve our understanding of how specific business practices, specifically Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) manifest across the world (Jamali, Karam, Yin, & Soundararajan, 2017; Matten & Moon, 2008). The original focus of these endeavors has been on developed countries (e.g., Matten & Moon, 2008; Jackson & Apostolakou, 2010; Jackson & Bartosch, 2016; Jackson & Rathert, 2016) with a more recent impetus to document business systems and the concomitant variations in CSR across developing and emerging countries (Arora & De, 2020; Fayyaz et al., 2017; Jain & Jamali, 2016; Pisani, Kourula, Kolk, & Meijer, 2017). With this expansion, we have been able to gain a richer understanding of institutional influences on CSR in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Africa (Jain & Zaman, 2020; Kolk & Rivera-Santos, 2018). Yet, scholarship examining institutional effects on CSR in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), although growing rapidly in numbers, continues to be disorganized and fragmented across a wide variety of academic journals with no systematic efforts to synthesize past work. Such a lack of synthesis has resulted in existing research taking a one- size-fit-all approach towards MENA CSR by appropriating the findings from a single MENA country study to the entire MENA region (Jain & Jamali, 2016; Jamali & Sidani, 2012). This recursive trend has led to an over-simplification of the otherwise complex heterogeneous institu- tional effects on CSR in the MENA (e.g., Lythreatis, Mostafa, & Wang, 2019; Karam & Jamali, 2013; Koleva, 2018). However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the MENA is characterized by unique institutional sub-environments and variegated social actors that can result in idiosyncratic effects on the practice of CSR. Economically and socially, while some countries in the MENA suffer from extreme and persistent poverty affecting one out of five people (UNDP, 2009), other countries serve as an important oil hub (constituting up to 65 % of the world’s oil reserves), with Gulf Middle Eastern countries ranking amongst the richest in the world (AlNaimi, Hossain, & Momin, 2012; Arabian Business, 2015). The dominance of oil centric capitalism in these countries and their concomitant con- tribution to environmental degradation raise essential questions on how institutional pressures can shape the sustainable development agenda of companies operating in this sub-region (World Bank, 2016). Politically, the MENA region is diverse, with political regimes ranging from con- fessional political systems (e.g., Lebanon) to absolute monarchies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait); that raises questions on how the state, through its diverse forms, can shape CSR practices over time. Moreover, the recent catastrophic conflicts in some countries in the region (e.g., Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) have impacted the lives of millions of people and have created a critical humanitarian crisis. While institutional https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2020.101127 Received 11 July 2018; Received in revised form 31 May 2020; Accepted 31 May 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: dj00@aub.edu.lb (D. Jamali), JainT@tcd.ie (T. Jain), gs50@aub.edu.lb (G. Samara). 1 The first three authors equally contributed to the development of this manuscript. Journal of World Business 55 (2020) 101127 1090-9516/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T