Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become crucial to businesses seeking to adopt sustainable development. However, there are several challenges to CSR adoption for sustainability that the present research aims to identify and evaluate, in addition to assessing the EU's response to these challenges. To this end, a novel picture fuzzy SWARA-TOPSIS method is proposed to rank EU countries after identifying the challenges that they face through a literature review. The results indicate that out of eight identified challenges, "Leadership Mindset and Corporate Commitment" is the most significant issue to CSR adoption for sustainability. Additionally, Italy shows the best performance in adopting CSR for sustainability, while Malta shows the worst. These results are discussed, and policy implications are presented. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;19:1254-1275. © 2023 SETAC.
Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; European Union; Fuzzy approach; Multicriteria decision models; Sustainable development goals (SDGs).
© 2023 SETAC.