**1. Introduction**

Friedman [1] stated that with one that perceives the task of the corporate manager as simply maximising profits for shareholders, being subject only to legal constrictions rather than broader concerns for other stakeholders or society as a whole. The view that more corporate social responsibility (CSR) than just shareholder-based performance indicators needs to be taken into account, leads to at least three further questions: the first question identifies which additional stakeholders might be seen as legitimate and accorded due regard in the management of corporation, with Phillips [2] (p. 130), as one example, discussing stakeholders and "non-stakeholders" (chapter 6), though the corporation is seen as having an ethical obligation to even non-stakeholders "as humans"; the second question is whether this broader responsibility should apply to all corporations or just certain ones, for example, Looser and Wehrmeyer [3] address the motivations of large versus small corporations; the third question considers how performance evaluation for other known stakeholders should be measured and reported.

Extant CSR literature has mainly focused on corporate and organisational levels and on the influence of both internal (e.g., managers and employees) and external stakeholders (e.g., investors and customers) [4]. However, CSR, by its nature, is a construct that links micro to macro levels [5]. As a result, CSR scholars have recently begun investigating CSR at the micro-level, for example, the relationship between the religious beliefs of corporate managers and their CSR [6–8]. Although the relationship between managers' religious

**Citation:** Helfaya, A.; Easa, N.F. Islamic Religiosity and CSR Attitudes—The Case of Egyptian Managers. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 11255. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su141811255

Academic Editor: Mark Anthony Camilleri

Received: 7 June 2022 Accepted: 6 September 2022 Published: 8 September 2022

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

beliefs and CSR might seem clear, empirical studies have produced inconsistent and mixed results [9,10].

Some CSR studies found no difference between religious and non-religious managers; some established a negative impact of religious managers on CSR attitudes, whereas others showed a positive impact [9,11]. Nevertheless, these conflicting and mixed results agree that religious beliefs have a strong influence on workplace and personal values that affect CSR attitudes and behaviour [9,12–14]. Both managers' beliefs and personal values are significant in shaping their managerial decisions and affect the values, beliefs, and behaviour of their followers [12,15].

In our study, we intend to contribute to the extant literature by examining the impact of religious beliefs on CSR attitudes and behaviour in addressing the three methodological problems that Weaver and Agle [16] specify. *First,* although the existing literature aims to theorise and measure religious beliefs as a one-dimensional concept of individual behaviour, such as participating in worship activities [16,17], or cognitive components [18], we adopted the Mazereeuw-van der Duijn Schouten et al. [9] classification of the different aspects of religiosity as religiosity cannot be perceived as a single phenomenon.

*Second,* we intend to contribute to CSR research by assessing managers' attitudes toward CSR and their CSR behaviour [4,19]. Weaver and Agle [16] found that prior studies focused on attitudinal methods of business morals. For example, Ibrahim et al. [8] examined the association between religiousness and CSR orientation, Parboteeah, Hoegl, and Cullen [20] tested the impact of religion on views of the workplace, and Ramasamy et al. [21] investigated the impact of religiosity on consumers' support for CSR. Because attitudinal matrices, in particular, may suffer from societal interest bias, this study also assesses the CSR behaviour of managers, see also [22].

*Third,* this study contributes to existing CSR literature by collecting and analysing 274 questionnaires from Egyptian Muslim managers. This method is unique, as prior researchers used samples of undergraduate and/or postgraduate students [7,10,23]. Likewise, Loe et al. [24] contend that the use of industry professionals (e.g., Accountants, Financial Analysts, Managers, and Executives) improves the reliability of the research results.

Based on the above debate, understanding this relationship is crucial for two purposes. *First,* as governments face critical and organisational challenges in monitoring and minimising societal and environmental problems, there is a strong interest in CSR for understanding and responding to public sustainable development goals [10,25]. It is crucial to identify the factors that are likely to affect the decision-making processes of corporate managers [13,26]. *Second,* managers need to understand the ways in which their religious beliefs affect their CSR attitudes and behaviours [13]. According to Murphy et al. [10], religion could encourage managers to adopt religious values that promote CSR values, such as stewardship, charitable activities, morality, etc. Therefore, it is very important to understand the influence of managers' religious beliefs on CSR attitudes and behaviour.

This study is structured as follows. First, key aspects of the religiosity and CSR literature are highlighted. We then explain our methodology, and then, our findings. Finally, we discuss our conclusions, and come up with the research implications, and limitations of the research and then suggest some avenues for future research.
