Strategic corporate social responsibility and economic performance |
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Authors: | Constantin Belu Cristiana Manescu |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Money and Banking , The Bucharest University of Economics , P-?a Roman?, No. 6, 010374 Bucharest , Romania constantin.belu@csie.ase.ro;3. Department of Economics , University of Gothenburg , Box 640, 405 30, Sweden |
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Abstract: | This article proposes a novel Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) index based on a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Acknowledging the argument that companies might favour those CSR dimensions that provide strategic competitive advantages, we argue that the index can capture companies’ strategic approach to CSR. Furthermore, our findings reveal a neutral relationship between this strategic CSR index and economic performance as measured by Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q, when controlling for firm unobserved heterogeneity and past economic performance. By contrast, an equally-weighted index of the same CSR indicators is found to be negatively related with ROA, which reinforces our claim that this specific DEA-based index is a measure of strategic CSR. |
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Keywords: | corporate social responsibility data envelopment analysis strategic CSR difference-GMM |
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