Which are the tensions between social and economic goals in a corporate’s objectives and how can they be solved? Does voluntary disclosure really satisfy the informational needs of stakeholders and how can it be developed? Which are the instruments of Government and how should they use them to improve the ‘sustainability’ efforts of corporations? Which is the importance of managers’ ability to manage cultures in the mission to pursue economic benefits caring about the expectations of their social context of reference? Would a firm act in the same way in two different contexts? Do definitely “responsible” behaviours help some firms in outperforming others? Attempting to answer all those questions, CSR literature has shown critical knowledge gap in the lack of production of a multilevel research that is capable of integrating institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis in a unique synoptic review. The aim of this work is thus to give a multilevel overview of the key concepts regarding CSR, with the goal of understanding the underlying links that allow firms to act more or less responsibly in a given context of culture, regulations and competitive introducing a framework of analysis that can be useful for a broad audience of scholars and policy-makers that want to inspect on the CSR-financial performance link and the CSR management practices. The article, indeed, proposes a new framework that puts simultaneously at the centre of any analysis: 1) the role of managers and their discretion; 2) the cultural background of the context wherein their firm operates; 3) the role of Governments. This paper is structured as follows: I first briefly review the literature on the concept of CSR, focusing on the link between Corporate Social Performance and Corporate Financial Performance, underlining competing perspectives and the effects of CSR on the various categories of stakeholders. In the following part, I bring into focus the theme of environmental and social accounting, in order to analyse the reasons, the ways and the limits of voluntary disclosure’s processes that corporations need to put in action in order to communicate to all the stakeholders their own ‘sustainable’ actions. In the last part, I concentrate on the role of Governments as institutes of control and providers of clear points of orientation in order to force companies to be more active with regard to voluntary sustainability activities. Summing up, I provide conclusions and implications through which I expect to contribute to the debate about the link between CSR and a firm’s overall performance. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR; Corporate Performance; Management; Voluntary disclosure; Governance;