Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is of high relevance for food companies as this sector has a strong impact and a high dependence on the economy, the environment and on society. CSR's threats and opportunities are increasingly shifting from the single-firm level to food supply chains and food networks. This induces substantial challenges for the future due to firm heterogeneity and the associated diversity in CSR approaches.

We analyze the literature on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) by applying meta‐regression analysis (MRA) to 7800 results of 512 empirical studies. Our findings reveal a small positive link between CSP and CFP as well as the presence of publication bias that favors statistically significant CSP–CFP regression coefficients. We also evaluate the impact of the underlying research design on the heterogeneity in published effects using Bayesian and frequentist model‐averaging (FMA). We consider 42 contextual characteristics and our results show that reported CSP–CFP effects are smaller in cases where a binary index is used to measure CSP or when CSP is used as the dependent variable. In contrast, firms in industrial sectors or operating in China rather than the United States exhibit stronger effects. Finally, the CSP–CFP effect is driven by the choice of the econometric estimator and the inclusion of firm size as control variable.

This paper introduces the concept of ‘oligopolistic platformisation’ to capture the specific dynamics of collaboration and competition between multinational upstream agribusinesses and Big Tech companies in the agricultural (ag) sector. We examine this phenomenon through the lens of Van Dijck et al.’s platform mechanisms: datafication, selection and commodification. Multinational agribusinesses operate sectoral ag platforms that analyse spatial, weather and agronomic data to optimise farming operations, whilst Big Tech companies provide the digital infrastructure, including cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence. We explore how these pre-existing oligopolistic market structures influence the process and outcomes of platformisation in the ag sector. Using expert interviews, field observations, economic relationship mapping and an extensive literature review, we investigate relationships amongst multinational agribusinesses and between agribusinesses and Big Tech companies. Our findings reveal that Big Tech and multinational agribusinesses are collaboratively establishing digital platforms as the core organisational form of digital agriculture, aiming to consolidate most services. This collaboration blurs the lines between traditionally distinct industries, fostering overlapping ecosystems and mutually beneficial economic relationships in an already highly concentrated market. This dynamic has the potential to reinforce the market position of established companies, increase farmers’ dependency on agribusinesses and contribute to fragmented and siloed data systems.