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.     

完善企业社会责任法律规制的路径探究

企业是兼具经济属性与社会属性的市场主体,随着超大型企业出现,企业具备了影响一国乃至全球政治、文化的能力,企业的社会权利范围的扩张意味着社会责任的加重.企业关涉的利益相关者众多,为了平衡各方权益,首先应当构建企业社会责任的法律体系,做到有法可依违法必究;其次应当在经营决策的董事会、监事会中加入利益相关人代表,实现企业内部的分权与制衡;最后,在尊重企业经营自主权的前提下,以政策引导、激励企业履行社会责任.     

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 Social Responsibility and the Social Enterprise

In this article, we contend that due to their size and emphasis upon addressing external social concerns, the corporate relationship between social enterprises, social awareness and action is more complex than whether or not these organisations engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). This includes organisations that place less emphasis on CSR as well as other organisations that may be very proficient in CSR initiatives, but are less successful in recording practices. In this context, we identify a number of internal CSR markers that may be applied to measuring the extent to which internal CSR practices are being observed. These considerations may be contrasted with the evidence that community based CSR activities is often well developed in private sector small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (Observatory of European SMEs, 2002), a situation which may be replicated in social enterprises especially those that have grown from micro-enterprises embedded in local communities. We place particular emphasis upon the implications for employee management. Underpinning our position is the Aristotelian-informed capabilities approach, a theory of human development and quality of life, developed by Sen (1992; 1999) and Nussbaum (1999) which has been developed further, in an organisational context, (e.g., Cornelius, 2002); Cornelius and Gagnon, 2004; Gagnon and Cornelius, 1999; Vogt, 2005. We contend that the capabilities approach offers additional insights into CSR in social enterprises in general and internal CSR activity in particular. Our article concludes with proposals for future research initiatives and reflections upon social enterprise development from a capabilities perspective.     

Cross-sector Alliances for Corporate Social Responsibility Partner Heterogeneity Moderates Environmental Strategy Outcomes

This article provides a new mechanism in understanding how partner heterogeneity moderates an alliance??s ability to advance corporate social responsibility goals. I identified the antecedents for firms to select a more diverse set of partners and explored whether more diverse alliances (especially cross-sector alliances) may facilitate partners to achieve more proactive environmental outcomes. I employ 146 environmental alliances formed in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009 to test the assertions. Results suggest that firms with innovative orientation and alliance experiences tend to choose a more diverse set of partners (especially cross-sector partners); and such partner heterogeneity in turn moderates an alliance??s environmental outcomes??compared to inter-firm alliances, cross-sector alliances are more likely to facilitate partners to pursue more proactive environmental strategies.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

履行社会责任不必讳言经济利益

曾经发掘过一个企业的责任竞争力案例,是企业的一项产品,能带来很好的社会效益和经济效益。谈到社会效益时,对方侃侃而谈,如何贡献民生,如何扶持产业,口若悬河、气宇轩昂。但是问到经济效益时,对方则开始扭捏：“你们干嘛老问这个？我们做这些不是为了经济效益”,言外之意,如果扯到经济效益,则显得做社会责任的动机不纯,利字当头,名不正言不顺。     

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.     

Wage-Hikes Test Corporate Social Responsibility

Extensive attention have been attracted by series of events in China, from the spate of suicides by employ-ees of Foxconn, to the strikes at the Guangdong prov-ince plantof Toyota, to pay increases now spreadingacross the country. These events, with key words being pay rise and improving working condition,     

社会责任活动、社会责任沟通与企业价值

企业履行适当的社会责任是大势所趋,但目前理论与实务界对社会责任经济后果的认识存在困惑,难以指导企业的社会责任实践。企业社会责任对企业价值的影响因不同社会责任类型的收益、成本特征而异,并且社会责任价值实现受制于社会责任沟通的影响,企业应该在整体战略规划的视野里树立社会责任管理理念,对企业社会责任进行事前决策和实时的过程管理。