The motivations of this study are as follows: to provide a comprehensive review of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature; to analyse CSR issues from a strategic decision-making aspect; and to investigate the process of individual decision-makers’ CSRrelated decision-making in China. Therefore, the aims of this research are (1) to examine how managers’ strategic decision-making concerning CSR differs in different environments, (2) to analyse how stakeholder claims influence a manager’s SDM concerning CSR, and (3) to explore stakeholder salience and causal explanation theory in CSR activities. The author utilised a policy-capturing method to develop a series of scenarios concerning CSR activities. 376 valid questionnaires at the individual level were received from Chinese managers. Concerning the main research findings, this study indicated support for the proposition that the claims of employees and government had a positive impact on CSR-related SDM. Meanwhile, additional factors such as the level of previous company donation, firm size, firm age, CEOs’ attitudes towards charity donation and charitable organisations also had a positive impact on managers’ CSR-related SDM. Moreover, the higher the level of resultant self-enhancement, the less likely it is that managers make decisions to participate in CSR activities. In other words, the higher the resultant self-enhancement represents the managers are at the higher level of egoism (lower level of altruism), therefore this kind of managers are less likely to participate in CSR activities. Compared to managers who work for manufacturing and mining industries, managers from the financial services industry are more likely to make decisions to participate in CSR activities. From a theoretical perspective, this research contributes to the development of corporate social responsibility and strategic decision-making theory, as well as the application of stakeholder-salience and causal-explanation theory. Finally this study also provides suggestions for corporations and government from the practical perspective.