公司治理与企业社会责任研究

<正>一、引言企业社会责任研究兴起于20世纪初,从20世纪50年代开始,西方学术界和企业界就对企业社会责任展开了热烈的讨论。目前对企业社会责任研究可分为两部分,第一部分是对企业社会责任概念的界定和完善     

Corporate Environmental Responsibility

This paper offers directions for the continuing dialogue between business ethicists and environmental philosophers. I argue that a theory of corporate social responsibility must be consistent with, if not derived from, a model of sustainable economics rather than the prevailing neoclassical model of market economics. I use environmental examples to critique both classical and neoclassical models of corporate social responsibility and sketch the alternative model of sustainable development. After describing some implications of this model at the level of individual firms and industries, I offer an ethical justification of the sustainability alternative that is derived from the same values that underlie traditional market economics.     

公司的社会责任--做一个对社会负责的企业

英国石油巨头BP公司历来被看作肯承担社会责任的先锋。难道它这样做真的是为了公司的可持续发展?抑或仅仅是其制定的公关策略?     

Corporate Social Responsibility

In the context of some criticism about social responsibility education in business schools, the paper reports findings from a survey of CSR education (teaching and research) in Europe. It analyses the extent of CSR education, the different ways in which it is defined and the levels at which it is taught. The paper provides an account of the efforts that are being made to mainstream CSR teaching and of the teaching methods deployed. It considers drivers of CSR courses, particularly the historical role of motivated individuals and the anticipation of future success being dependent on more institutional drivers. Finally it considers main developments in CSR research both by business school faculty and PhD students, tomorrows researchers and the resources devoted to CSR research. The conclusion includes questions that arise and further research directions.     

Customer Fraud and Corporate Responsibility

Increasing frauds in insurance and mortgage-lending illustrate the dilemma for companies between tackling fraud in the public interest and retaining customer confidence and competitive position.     

企业信用与企业社会责任

企业社会责任的内涵目前在国际社会没有达成共识,它是根据企业在社会中面临的突出问题及与社会、利益相关者的博弈而不断变化的。从企业基本性质和利益相关者角度分析,其基本内涵是经济责任与法律责任。就目前我国企业面临的突出问题而言,应更强调经济责任与法律责任,也就是信用责任。企业信用是企业社会责任的基本内容,是落实企业社会责任的有效手段,我国建立信用机制必须大力发挥大众、政府、企业家和法制的力量。     

信息安全与企业社会责任

2011年末的互联网信息安全问题已经引起了社会各界的广泛关注。本文通过了解信息安全与隐私权的关系,企业社会责任与消费者的关系,将信息安全这一热点话题与企业社会责任这个热门领域联系起来,并从企业社会责任视角分析了信息安全问题,提出了相应的应对措施。企业社会责任理念必然会对解决信息安全问题提供良好的指引和借鉴。     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Size

Small and medium-sized firms form 90% of the worldwide population of businesses. However, it has been argued that given their smaller scale of operations, resource access constraints and lower visibility, smaller firms are less likely to participate in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This article examines the different economic motivations of firms with varying combinations of visibility, resource access and scale of operations. Arguments are presented to propose that in terms of visibility, resource access and operating scale, very small and very large firms are equally motivated to participate in CSR. However, the motivational bases for CSR participation are likely to be different. Medium-sized firms are the least motivated. This suggests a U-shaped relationship between firm size and CSR participation. This study contributes towards resolution of the long-standing debate on the effects of firm size on CSR participation, and highlights the importance of considering configurations of firm characteristics in the study of CSR outcomes. In conclusion, cautions are raised against the broad categorization of firms, without adequate attention to the underlying dimensions of such categorizations. This study was supported by Academic Research Fund Grant no. R-313-000-069-112 from the Ministry of Education, Singapore.     

Firm Internationalization and Corporate Social Responsibility

Using a large sample of 3,040 U.S. firms and 16,606 firm-year observations over the 1991–2010 period, we find strong evidence that firm internationalization is positively related to the firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) rating. This finding persists when we use alternative estimation methods, samples, and proxies for internationalization and when we address endogeneity concerns. We also provide evidence that the positive relation between internationalization and CSR rating holds for a large sample of firms from 44 countries. Finally, we offer novel evidence that firms with extensive foreign subsidiaries in countries with well-functioning political and legal institutions have better CSR ratings. Our findings shed light on the role of internationalization in influencing multinational firms’ CSR activities in the U.S. and around the world.     

Business Groups and Corporate Social Responsibility

We present an analysis of over 400 comments about complying with tax obligations extracted from online discussion forums for freelancers. While the topics investigated by much of the literature on taxpayer behaviour are theory driven, we aimed to explore the universe of online discussions about tax in order to extract those topics that are most relevant to taxpayers. The forum discussions were subjected to a qualitative thematic analysis, and we present a model of the ‘universe’ of tax as reflected in taxpayer discussions. The model comprises several main actors (tax laws, tax authority, tax practitioners, and the taxpayer’s social network) and describes the multiple ways in which they relate to taxpayers’ behaviour. We also conduct a more focused analysis to show that the majority of taxpayers seem unconcerned with many of the variables that have been the focus of tax behaviour research (e.g. audits, penalties, etc.), and that most people are motivated to be compliant and are more concerned with how to comply than whether to comply. Moreover, we discuss how these ‘real-world’ tax discussions question common assumptions in the study of tax behaviour and how they inform our understanding of business ethics more generally.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Resource-Based Perspectives

Firms engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) because they consider that some kind of competitive advantage accrues to them. We contend that resource-based perspectives (RBP) are useful to understand why firms engage in CSR activities and disclosure. From a resource-based perspective CSR is seen as providing internal or external benefits, or both. Investments in socially responsible activities may have internal benefits by helping a firm to develop new resources and capabilities which are related namely to know-how and corporate culture. In effect, investing in social responsibility activities and disclosure has important consequences on the creation or depletion of fundamental intangible resources, namely those associated with employees. The external benefits of CSR are related to its effect on corporate reputation. Corporate reputation can be understood as a fundamental intangible resource which can be created or depleted as a consequence of the decisions to engage or not in social responsibility activities and disclosure. Firms with good social responsibility reputation may improve relations with external actors. They may also attract better employees or increase current employees’ motivation, morale, commitment and loyalty to the firm. This article contributes to the understanding of why CSR may be seen as having strategic value for firms and how RBP can be used in such endeavour. Manuel Castelo Branco is Invited Lecturer of Accounting at the Faculty of Economics, University of Porto. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Economics and Management, University of Minho. His research has been published in journals such as the Social Responsibility Journal and Corporate Communications: An International Journal. Lúcia Lima Rodrigues, Ph.D is Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management, University of Minho. She is the Head of the Department of Management and the Director of the Master in Accounting and Management. She is the Editor of the Portuguese Journal of Accounting and Management, Editor for Europe of the international journal Accounting History. She is referee in several Portuguese and International journals. Her research has been published in several major international journals in Accounting such as The Accounting Historians Journal, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Accounting Forum.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Credit Ratings

This study provides evidence on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firms’ credit ratings. We find that credit rating agencies tend to award relatively high ratings to firms with good social performance. This pattern is robust to controlling for key firm characteristics as well as endogeneity between CSR and credit ratings. We also find that CSR strengths and concerns influence credit ratings and that the individual components of CSR that relate to primary stakeholder management (i.e., community relations, diversity, employee relations, environmental performance, and product characteristics) matter most in explaining firms’ creditworthiness. Overall, our results suggest that CSR performance conveys important non-financial information that rating agencies are likely to use in their evaluation of firms’ creditworthiness, and that CSR investments—particularly those that extend beyond compliance behavior to reflect what is desired by society—can lead to lower financing costs resulting from higher credit ratings.     

Corporate Environmental Responsibility and Firm Risk

In this study, we examine the relation between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and risk in U.S. public firms. We develop and test the risk-reduction, resource-constraint, and cross-industry variation hypotheses. Using an extensive U.S. sample during the 1991–2012 period, we find that for U.S. industries as a whole, CER engagement inversely affects firm risk after controlling for various firm characteristics. The result remains robust when we use firm fixed effect or an alternative measure of CER using principal component analysis or downside risk measures. To address the concern of endogeneity bias, we use a system equations approach and dynamic system generalized methods of moment regressions, and continue to find that environmentally responsible firms experience lower risk. These findings support the risk-reduction hypothesis, but not the resource-constraint hypothesis, along with the notion that the top management in U.S. firms is generally risk averse and that their CER engagement facilitates their risk management efforts. Our cross-industry analysis further reveals that the inverse CER-risk association mainly comes from the manufacturing sector, whereas in the service sector, CER tends to increase firm risk.     

Toward Dynamic Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility

Today, sustainable relations with a broad range of key stakeholders are not only important from a normative business ethics perspective, but also from an entrepreneurial viewpoint to allow and support the long-term survival of a firm. We will argue that the traditional conception of a firm’s corporate social responsibility does not reflect this view and that a comprehensive and dynamic conception of a firm’s responsibilities is necessary to map the reality of business practice and to manage the challenges implied by sustainability. We think that distributive justice, that is the way in which firms involve their stakeholders in their wealth creation and dissemination processes, provides a comprehensive understanding of corporate responsibilities. Concerning procedural justice, we will discuss how firms involve stakeholders in their strategic processes according to their contribution to wealth creation. In the course of the article, we will propose a framework along with three design principles that can be used for shaping dynamic and comprehensive corporate responsibilities, and which thereby allow a sustainable procedure for changing business and non-business environments.     

Corporate Versus Individual Moral Responsibility

There is a clear tendency in contemporary political/legal thought to limit agency to individual agents, thereby denying the existence and relevance of collective moral agency in general, and corporate agency in particular. This tendency is ultimately rooted in two particular forms of individualism – methodological and fictive (abstract) – which have their source in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the dominant notion of moral agency owes a lot to Kant whose moral/legal philosophy is grounded exclusively on abstract reason and personal autonomy, to the detriment of a due recognition of the socio-historical grounds of moral social conduct.I shall argue that an adequate theory of responsibility is needed, which does not only take into account individual responsibility, but also collective and corporate responsibility, capable of taking into consideration society and its problems. Furthermore, corporations are consciously and carefully structured organisations with different levels of management and have clearly defined aims and objectives, a central feature upon which I shall be focussing in this paper.