Managing Stakeholders’ Interests Towards the Sustainability of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Projects – A Paradigmatic and Methodological Review

CSR research has evolved in response to changing stakeholders’ interests with several publications and has touched on many themes with only a few research paradigmatic and methodologies reviews. Thus, this study aims to investigate the state of knowledge of stakeholder interests’ management towards the sustainability of CSR projects through a paradigmatic and methodological lens. This study used systematic review based on clearly defined transparent processes and criteria to aggregate knowledge on the status quo in research paradigms and methodologies in CSR research. Using systematic review methodology, four databases, including Scopus, were searched to identify relevant articles published from 2000 to 2025. The search and screening resulted in ten (10) peer-reviewed publications which were systematically reviewed to come up with the study’s findings. The findings highlight that CSR research embraces paradigm pluralism, with interpretivism paradigm being dominant with its associated qualitative research methodology in assessing stakeholder interests’ management toward sustainability of CSR projects. All publications were cross-sectional design. No publications adopted pragmatism paradigm, mixed method and longitudinal designs. The study draws CSR researchers’ attention to various traditions to select from when designing their research to reflect coherent paradigms and methodologies.