This study explores the advancement of ethical practices and environmental sustainability in Thai banking through an in-depth case analysis of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), the country’s first indigenous bank founded in 1907. SCB has significantly influenced ethical banking practices and sustainability initiatives. The research provides a unique comparative analysis of SCB’s ethical frameworks and sustainability policies, assessing their impact on key stakeholders, including customers, employees, the community, and the environment. Employing a qualitative case study methodology, this study utilizes secondary data from SCB’s reports and CSR documents, analyzed through thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. The findings reveal SCB’s substantial progress in aligning ethical considerations with environmental sustainability, contributing new insights into ethical decision-making processes and the balance between profit and responsibility. Recommendations are provided to enhance ethical and sustainable practices in banking, adding to the discourse on corporate responsibility, environmental stewardship, and sustainable development.

This study investigates the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dimensions and employees’ satisfaction and retention for sustainability in banks.  Four components (economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic) are analyzed CSR activities and their effects on employee’s satisfaction and retention in the company. Purposive and convenient sampling method was used to get the information from 221 participants. The entire form of the dataset is utilized to execute regression and correlation analysis using SPSS. In order to find out the relationship between economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic factors and employee’s satisfaction and retention, regression beta coefficient and correlation were used to analyze. This study also examines the relationship between job satisfaction and intentions to retain with an organization. The findings demonstrate that the CSR aspects of ethical and philanthropic have a considerable and favorable influence on employee’s satisfaction. The outcome also demonstrates a good and prominent influence of legal CSR on the satisfaction of employee’s to retain with the firm. Moreover, this study demonstrates that economic aspect of CSR has no significant impact on employee’s retention and satisfaction. Correlation analysis depicts that economic CSR is positively and significantly connected with employee’s retention and satisfaction. This research came to the conclusion that enhancing employees view regarding CSR activities such as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic will increase employee’s satisfaction. Therefore, executives and managers in the banks should take steps to influence how employees see CSR areas in order to raise employee’s satisfaction and retention in the banks for sustainability.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), capital structure, and financial distress in Jordan’s financial services sector. It tests the mediating effect of capital structure on the CSR-distress linkage. Utilizing a panel data regression approach, the analysis examines a sample of 35 Jordanian banks and insurance firms from 2015–2020. CSR is evaluated through content analysis of sustainability disclosures. Financial distress is measured using Altman’s Z-score model. The findings reveal an insignificant association between aggregated CSR engagement and bankruptcy risk. However, capital structure significantly mediates the impact of CSR on financial distress. Specifically, enhanced CSR enables higher leverage capacity, subsequently escalating distress risk. The results advance academic literature on the nuanced pathways linking CSR to financial vulnerability. For practitioners, optimally balancing CSR and financial sustainability is recommended to strengthen resilience. This study provides novel empirical evidence on the contingent nature of CSR financial impacts within Jordan’s understudied financial services sector. The conclusions offer timely insights to inform policies aimed at achieving sustainable and stable financial sector development.

This article examines the overseas corporate social responsibility (CSR) patterns of Chinese international contractors (CICs). Adopting an institutional and political economy approach, a unique dataset is constructed with country-specific contents drawn from CSR-related reports and website information of 50 top CICs. This dataset provides a foundation for systematic content analysis of CICs’ overseas CSR practices, revealing that both political legitimacy-seeking and strategic competitiveness-seeking motivations drive CICs’ CSR activities abroad, characterized by the prioritization of customer and community engagement. The findings highlight the coexistence of the exogenous pressures for the national image-building purpose and the endogenous awareness of CSR strategic importance for corporate internationalization. The hybridization of political and economic rationales is presented as the defining feature of CICs’ current overseas CSR patterns, with the balance between them being determined by stakeholder type and internal business needs influenced by corporate internationalization experience.