**2. Does CSR depend on innovation?**

Since the second half of the 20th century, the corporate responsibility towards ecological and social matters has attracted a lot of interest, especially with the metaenvironments in which firms operate nowadays [22, 23].

First, corporate sustainability has been presented as an exception [24]. In order to survive, firms have to provide continuously several resources and energies mobilized in a strategic plan, consistent with the framework rules and norms; otherwise, it will eventually fade. In other words, companies need to allocate their resources to create value and competitive advantage through a greater network development as well as an innovation encouragement [25]. According to the slack resources theory, due to the resources scarcity firms should arbitrate to select sustainable investments. Nevertheless, combining the divergent goals of stakeholders to find the optimal resources allocation function is the hardest mission for every company.

With the increase of multiple pressures and law evolvement, firms' ethical and social practices no longer present a simple voluntary decision, which explains the CSR development over time. Visser [13] considered that CSR versions missed the promotion of our community and ecosystem health, quite the contrary, they made it worse. Specifically, they failed to introduce innovative tools dealing with the existing environmental issues. He argued that the CSR understanding has been

evolving according to overlapping ages1 : The age of Greed, the age of philanthropy, the Marketing age and the Management age. While the three first ages have introduced a responsive CSR stream, the management age has established CSR in the core of business. It generates a strategic CSR.

When the firm is involved in CSR activities that meant to exclusively respond to stakeholders' basic needs and reporting standards, its CSR policy is responsive. However, when more pioneering initiatives are undertaken and going beyond standards and regulations, CSR activities are strategic [9, 27, 28]. We should also mention that another more civil version of CSR is taking place, namely the transformative CSR [13]. Nonetheless, we consider that this version is still in an embryonic stage for the profit-oriented enterprises.

The coexistence of these ages depends on the space–time setting. Hence, to explain the CSR and Innovation nexus we have to understand the evolvement of the CSR concept and its continuous interaction with corporate innovation.
