Corporate social responsibility versus corporate shareholder responsibility: A family firm perspective

Recent literature suggests that some socially responsible corporate actions benefit shareholders while others do not. We study differences in policy toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) between family and non-family firms, using environmental performance as the proxy for CSR. We show that family firms are more responsible to shareholders than non-family firms in making environmental investments. When shareholder interests and societal interests coincide, i.e., when it comes to alleviating environmental concerns that have potential to harm society and elevate the firm's risk exposure, family firms do at least as well as non-family firms in protecting shareholder interests. However, when shareholder and societal interests diverge, i.e., when it comes to making environmental investments that might benefit society but do not benefit shareholders, family firms protect shareholder interests by undertaking a significantly lower level of such investments than non-family firms. Our findings suggest that lack of diversification by controlling families creates strong incentives for them to act in the financial interest of all shareholders, which more than overcomes any noneconomic benefits families may derive from engaging in social causes that do not benefit non-controlling shareholders.     

Stakeholders and the stock price crash risk: What matters in corporate social performance?

This study provides evidence for the differential impacts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives targeting different stakeholder groups on stock price crash risk. In particular, it highlights CSR's role in mitigating risk and creating shareholder value. Our results reveal that managerial bad news hoarding and the resultant stock crashes are largely determined by the social CSR dimension, and this effect is predominantly seen in undervalued firms. Moreover, social CSR subcategories aimed at specific stakeholder groups (such as the community, employees, or customers) tend to mitigate future crashes. In contrast, firms' environmental initiatives and governance characteristics seem to have trivial effects on stock crashes. Using a quasi-natural experiment, we find that the mitigating effect of social CSR dimension on crash risk is likely to be causal.     

New Corporate Forms: One Viable Solution to Advancing Environmental Sustainability

There is a clear trend in corporate governance toward increased attention to the environmental and social impacts of business operations. Major consulting firms are advising Fortune 500 companies on how to become more environmentally sustainable, private equity and “impact” investors are measuring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, and voluntary reporting and shareholder resolutions on issues of environmental sustainability are on the rise. While traditional corporate forms allow companies to embrace social and environmental responsibility with some measure of success, various real and perceived risks encourage directors to focus on short‐term profitability. Even if a company has a strong social mission at inception, founders often have difficulty “anchoring their mission” over time. And the lack of required disclosure of social and environmental performance makes it more difficult for investors to evaluate and compare companies. Many believe that the institutionalized mispricing of natural resources and the continued failure to price externalities, combined with the progressive nature of climate change, require the transformation of both business and law. This article discusses social and environmental sustainability within the traditional corporate form and then explores three emerging alternatives that are now being used by businesses in California: limited liability corporations (LLCs); benefit corporations (B corps); and flexible purpose corporations (FPCs). Of these three alternatives, FPCs—a corporate form that requires shareholders to agree on one or more social missions with management and the board—may be best suited to meet the needs of the many small private firms (as well as some large public companies) that, whether for purely economic or altruistic reasons, plan to integrate ESG into their operations.     

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Trend

Corporate Social Responsibility, or “CSR,” has recently become a subject of study by financial economists. While there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence to support all variety of positions, broad‐based statistical evidence about the CSR movement is in short supply. This article presents some new empirical evidence that aims to answer three related questions about CSR: First, are corporations increasing their “investment” in what is considered socially responsible behavior? Second, does corporate investment in social responsibility affect a company's financial performance and shareholder value? Third, why do companies invest in CSR: to increase shareholder value, or to uphold a “moral” commitment to non‐investor stakeholders and “society”? Using a social responsibility metric that measures the net CSR strengths (i.e., strengths less concerns) of each S&P 500 and Domini 400 company, the authors report that the average net CSR for both indexes decreased during the 15‐year period (1991‐2005) of the study—though the Domini 400, as might be expected, experienced a smaller decline. The authors also report that corporate strengths have increased, on average, but at a slower rate than the “concerns,” which suggests that corporate CSR efforts may be aimed at a moving target with steadily rising expectations and requirements. Second, the authors report that companies with more CSR strengths or fewer CSR weaknesses produced higher ROA over the same 15‐year period. The authors' findings here suggest a “circular” causality in which profitable companies are more likely to invest in CSR initiatives to begin with, but then find their performance further improved by such investment. Third, the authors' findings suggest that most companies devote resources to CSR initiatives as a means of maximizing long‐run value rather than out of a prior commitment to stakeholders. More specifically, the study shows that companies appear to invest more heavily to build CSR strengths than to eliminate CSR concerns. And as the authors conclude, this behavior is consistent with a strategy of using CSR as a form of “risk management” that promotes corporate strengths in order to limit the potential negative effects of—perhaps by diverting attention from—their weaknesses.     

Conceptualising social risk and business risk associated with private sector development projects

There are various definitions of social risk. For some, social risk pertains to social protection, and risk-taking is thought to enhance human welfare. For others, social risk is contrasted with empirical risk, where the perception of risk by lay members of society differs from that of experts in any given field. More recently, social risk has come to be associated with the potential future negative social impacts of corporate activities and private sector development on individuals and groups. This paper theorises the relationships between social risk and business risk in the context of private sector developments. Many business leaders continue to conflate social risk with their existing understandings of business risk, with social risk understood to be the risk to the business arising from the actions of community stakeholders. Conceiving of social risk in this way has implications for the discrete identification, prevention and mitigation of social and business risks and impacts, and has ramifications for corporate risk management strategies, as well as companies’ relationships with community stakeholders.     

Mandatory corporate social responsibility disclosure and dividend payouts: evidence from a quasi‐natural experiment

Employing the enactment of a regulation that mandates a subset of firms to disclose their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as a quasi‐natural experiment, we find that mandatory CSR disclosure reduces firms’ dividend payouts significantly. Further analyses indicate that the negative relation is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms, where shareholders lack of effective tools to protect themselves against pressures from stakeholders, and a shift of relative power towards stakeholders is more likely to occur. Our paper provides a specific channel through which mandatory CSR disclosure benefits stakeholders at the expense of shareholders.     

Homewonder Ltd: Shareholders Versus Other Stakeholders

Corporate social responsibility involves various economic and social issues. This case presents a dilemma of the trade‐off between economic benefits to shareholders and social benefits to other stakeholders. To respond to recent flat sales growth, as well as serious needs for cost reduction and meeting analysts' expectations, Homewonder Manufacturing Ltd. is considering a strategic plan to expand into Asia. To facilitate this plan, the CEO of the company proposed offshoring and outsourcing some business operations, as well as downsizing the company's current social programs. Various stakeholders will be affected by this plan. This case analysis requires an integration of the shareholder and stakeholder theories of the firm. It provides opportunities for students to consider whether relationships with other stakeholders are a salient corporate strategic concern, and perform costs and benefits analyses arising from this dilemma.     

Corporate social responsibility and firm financial risk reduction: On the moderating role of the legal environment

Approaching the institutional environment through its regulative component, we distinguish between shareholder‐oriented and stakeholder‐oriented countries. Identifying first this classification with the distinction between common law versus civil law countries and using a large sample of 5,716 firm‐year observations that represents 1,169 individual firms in 25 countries between 2001 and 2011, we show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) significantly reduces firms’ idiosyncratic risk in civil law countries but not in common law countries. Using then a more direct classification based on shareholder and employee protection scores, our findings suggest that CSR negatively affects firms’ idiosyncratic and systematic risks only in less shareholder‐oriented and more stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. These findings are similar in the different components of CSR with two notable exceptions: a high score in corporate governance reduces firm risk only in common law countries, and community involvement increases idiosyncratic risk in more shareholder‐oriented and less stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. Taken together, our results strongly support the view that the relationship between CSR and financial risk is moderated by the institutional context of the firm.     

A Corporate Social Responsibility Framework for Accounting Research

Over the past two decades, there has been growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) among accounting scholars. As a testament to this growing interest, two review papers on CSR were published last year in accounting journals. Implicitly guiding hypothesis development in CSR studies is the notion of a conflict between shareholders and stakeholders. We define CSR in terms of a win-win situation for shareholders and stakeholders: a CSR framework for strategic business purposes. We provide evidence supporting this outlook for CSR using cases pertaining to specific companies and findings from archival empirical studies. According to our CSR framework, resources allocated for CSR activity also help propel business strategy; as such, it is difficult to isolate CSR inputs and/or outputs due to problems of non-separability and multidimensionality. While measurement is a challenge, our framework nonetheless opens up various promising avenues for future research.     

Socially Responsible Investment and Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting in the UK: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study examines the relations between corporate social and environmental reporting (CSR) and the socially responsible investment (SRI) sector. The evidence presented, based upon the informed opinions of 14 experts within the SRI field, suggests that the field of CSR is on the verge of a major change towards a substantial and sustained improvement in quality and quantity. The SRI sector is undergoing radical changes. A wider social movement has already led to exponential growth, as more people become concerned with how their money is invested. Moreover, the Pensions Review has widened this concern to institutional investment. Representing 35% of the stock market, the potential impact of this regulation is anticipated to be significant. One possible outcome could be a marked increase in the size and power of the SRI sector, improving their ability to successfully influence corporate behaviour. Success is likely to increase further as corporations begin to see a business case, as well as, or as opposed to a moral case, for acting in a more responsible manner. The Turnbull report on the combined codes of corporate governance is a significant factor influencing this. For the first time, reputational risk, and hence how companies manage environmental, ethical and social reputations, is on the core corporate governance agenda. A more powerful outcome would be an increased interest from mainstream fund managers in SRI modes of corporate assessment. Preliminary evidence suggests that this will create a greater demand for CSR, and greater legitimacy of CSR within the accounting orthodoxy.     

A framework for social and environmental accounting research

This essay explores recent trends in social and environmental accounting research (SEAR). We offer a basic SEAR typology to examine the limitations and possibilities within the current discourse. SEAR has taken a corporate approach in liberal democratic social space. Our typology examines the opportunities for SEAR to interpret and create change in social practice.     

Shareholder election of CSR committee members and its effects on CSR performance

We examine the election of directors to corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees and whether shareholder votes influence CSR committee effectiveness. Our study is motivated by the importance that shareholders place on CSR and the responsibilities of the board in overseeing a firm's CSR practices. We find that CSR committee members receive greater shareholder support than other directors. We further find that among CSR committee members, those who are more experienced and skilled receive greater shareholder support. Furthermore, when a firm's CSR performance is poorer (better), CSR committee members receive lower (greater) shareholder support compared with other directors. Finally, we find that through voting, shareholders can increase the efficacy of the CSR committee, leading to improvements in CSR committee structure and performance. Overall, our results suggest that shareholders value the services and expertise of CSR committee members and hold them accountable for CSR performance. Shareholder votes are also effective in enhancing CSR performance.     

Multi-dimensional corporate social responsibilities and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

Worldwide, there has been an ongoing debate about whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can lead to better financial market performance, or whether corporations can do well by doing good. Working with a sample of all listed companies in China from 2010 to 2017, this study examines the impacts of three dimensions of CSR on stock price crash risk. We find that CSR, especially firms' responsibility to the environment and stakeholders, significantly reduces stock price crash risk, while social contributions such as charitable donations have no significant effect on stock crash risk. Attracting long-term institutional investors is the primary mechanism through which CSR can curb crash risk. Mitigating earnings management is also a channel through which overall CSR and stakeholder responsibility contribute to a lower stock crash risk. Finally, we find that stakeholder responsibility and environmental responsibility can help improve stock market performance.     

American Enterprise Institute Roundtable: Was Milton Friedman Right about Shareholder Capitalism?*

In this look back at Milton Friedman's famous essay in The New York Times 50 years ago organized by the American Enterprise Institute, three well‐known panelists discussed whether executives should continue to be guided by Friedman's oft‐cited statement that the “social responsibility of business is to increase its own profits.” One pretext or prompt for this discussion is the Business Roundtable's recent rethinking of the corporate mission, with its emphasis on all corporate stakeholders, employees and local communities as well as shareholders. Among the panelists, Marty Lipton takes the most enthusiastic view of this alternative to shareholder primacy. Now often identified as “stakeholder capitalism,” this alternative is embraced by Lipton as part of a “New Paradigm” in which large, universal owners act more or less in concert to pressure private companies to play a greater role in protecting the environment and lifting people out of poverty. By contrast, fund manager Cliff Asness and former Bush advisor and Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard find considerable relevance and resilience in the old shareholder paradigm. Hubbard, for example, emphasizes the impossibility of maximizing long‐run value in highly competitive product and labor markets without taking care of all important stakeholders. And while sympathetic to the intent of the Business Roundtable—and the value of ensuring enough investment in corporate stakeholders—both Hubbard and Asness are troubled by the prospect of a corporate governance system trying to hold corporate managers accountable in a stakeholder‐centric world.     

An Investor Perspective on the Black Box of Corporate Social Responsibility

In summarizing the findings of their recent study, the authors report findings that suggest that not all socially responsible corporate policies are likely to have the same effect on a company's ownership and value. Using environmental policy as their proxy for CSR activities, the authors classify corporate environmental practices into two categories: (1) actions that reduce the likelihood of harmful outcomes by reducing the corporate exposure to environmental risk; and (2) actions that enhance companies' perceived ‘greenness’ through investments that go beyond both legal requirements and any conceivable risk management rationale. Although both groups of environmental practices are likely to be viewed as socially beneficial, corporate expenditures that reduce a firm's environmental risk exposure are more likely to benefit shareholders by limiting the risk of losses arising from environmental accidents, lawsuits, and fines—and possibly thereby reducing the firm's cost of capital. By contrast, corporate expenditures that enhance the firm's perceived greenness by going beyond legal requirements and risk management rationales could actually reduce shareholder value. Consistent with this hypothesis, the authors find that institutional investors tend to own smaller than average percentages of both companies the authors identify as ‘toxic’ and make limited efforts to manage their environmental risk, and companies they label ‘green’ with low environmental risk exposure but relatively high CSR spending on the environment. At the same time, such investors hold larger‐than‐average positions in ‘neutral’ companies with relatively low, or effectively managed, environmental risk exposures and limited investment in ‘greenness’ programs. The authors also find that both toxic and green companies have lower (Tobin's Q) valuations than neutral companies, and that otherwise toxic companies that effectively manage their environmental risk exposures have higher valuations.     

Mandatory CSR expenditure and firm performance

India has recently mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure under section 135 of the Indian Companies Act 2013 – the first national jurisdiction to do so. In line with the “shareholder value maximization” concept, we document the positive impacts of CSR expenditure on firm performance measured by return on asset and cash flow from operations. Additionally, we find that, despite the regulatory requirement, mandated CSR legislation is a significant but not the sole determinant of actual CSR spending by firms; rather, firm-specific economic factors such as size, level of cash balance and cash flow from operations have a moderating effect. We also observe that CSR expenditure contributes to firm performance irrespective of the level of actual CSR expenditure relative to the level of mandatory CSR expenditure. Our findings potentially reconcile conflicting results presented in the literature and provide valuable information for governments and regulatory authorities that are considering the mandatory implementation of CSR expenditure.     

Tradeoff between corporate investment and CSR: The moderating effect of financial slack,workforce slack,and board gender diversity

This paper investigates the existence of a tradeoff between corporate investment (i.e., tangible and intangible) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the presence of the moderating effects of financial slack, human resources slack, and board gender diversity. Based on an international sample of 44,129 firm-year observations between 2005 and 2019, we find that corporate investment leads to significantly lower CSR engagement in all three pillars (i.e., environmental, social, and governance). Furthermore, while financial slack positively moderates between corporate investment and CSR, human resources slack and board gender diversity negatively moderate between corporate investment and CSR. This outcome is robust in terms of endogeneity concerns, alternative sampling, alternative investment proxies, CSR regulations, and timing impacts. Hence, we find the dominance of the shareholders' perspective rather than the stakeholders' perspective. The results outline the tradeoff between corporate investment and CSR and the role of contingencies in this tradeoff relationship.     

Social Capital,Trust, and Corporate Performance: How CSR Helped Companies During the Financial Crisis (and Why It Can Keep Helping Them)

The authors summarize the findings of their study, published recently in the Journal of Finance, that shows that CSR investments can help companies when they perhaps need it most—that is, during sharp downturns when overall trust in companies and markets declines. Companies with high‐CSR rankings experienced stock returns that were five to seven percentage points higher than their low‐CSR counterparts during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and even larger excess returns during the Enron crisis of 2001–2003. High‐CSR companies during the crisis also reported better operating performance, higher growth, higher employee productivity, and greater access to debt markets—while continuing to generate higher shareholder returns as late as the end of 2013. Many of these operating improvements continued well into the post‐crisis period, though at more modest levels. As the authors view their findings, the ‘social capital’ built up by corporate CSR programs complements effective financial capital management in increasing shareholder wealth mainly by limiting companies' downside risk. CSR is seen as not only reducing systematic as well as firm‐specific risk, but as also providing protection against overall ‘loss of trust.’ The social capital created by CSR programs is said to provide a kind of insurance policy that pays off when investors and the overall economy face a severe crisis of confidence.     

Wie man durch Moral ins „Geschäft“ kommt: Ein ordonomischer Beitrag zum betrieblichen Risikomanagement

Through an analysis of Alfred Krupp’s 19th-century social welfare program, this paper develops an ordonomic contribution to corporate risk management. The paper argues that companies can employ ‘morality as a factor of production’ by a differentiated business strategy of moral commitments. In this way, companies can not only considerably reduce their exposure to the undesirable risks of losing core business relationships with important stakeholders. But at the same time, businesses may increase their readiness to take desirable innovation risks that are pivotal for long-term value creation. Ultimately, the paper develops an argument for how companies can better live up to the role of being an agent of societal value creation, often articulated by concepts such as “corporate social responsibility” or “corporate citizenship”.     

企业社会责任、融资约束与企业金融化

企业承担社会责任能够通过与利益相关者进行资源交换获得战略资源,但是战略资源对企业绩效的影响取决于企业的投资方向。在实体企业金融化愈演愈烈的经济环境下,本文利用2010—2017年中国A股非金融上市公司数据重点探讨了企业社会责任对企业金融化的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明:(1)企业社会责任提高了企业的金融资产配置水平,存在“金融化效应”;(2)融资约束在企业社会责任对企业金融化的影响中具有部分中介作用,企业社会责任通过缓解融资约束加剧了企业金融化;(3)企业社会责任的“金融化效应”仅在外部监管力度较弱的非国有企业、内部治理水平较低的低股权集中度企业中存在,行政外部监督和企业内部监督能够在“融资约束—企业金融化”过程中对管理层的机会主义行为发挥治理作用;(4)识别机制检验证实了中国企业金融化主要出于利润最大化的“投资替代”动机。以上结论为政策制定者规范企业社会责任报告披露方式、引导金融回归实体经济具有借鉴意义。