基于“Meta分析”视角的企业社会绩效与企业财务绩效之间的关系研究

随着企业社会责任理论体系逐步的发展与完善,国内外学者开始关注企业社会绩效(CSP)与企业财务绩效(CFP)之间的关系,但是其中大量有关的研究结果却是互相矛盾的。本研究首先提出了一个理论模型以及相关研究假设,以国内外有关的实证研究文献作为研究对象,采用Meta分析方法对各项独立研究结果进行综合统计分析。其研究结果表明:企业社会绩效常常与企业财务绩效是直接地相互作用和相互影响的;企业管理能力和企业声誉作为中介变量对CSP与CFP关系有着正向的影响,其中企业声誉有着高度的影响;大多数CSP测量方法与CFP测量方法之间有着显著的正向关系,其中CSP声誉排名测量方法与CFP测量方法之间显示出相当高的正向关系,而以市场基础和会计基础CFP测量方法与CSP测量方法之间的关系要低于感知(调查)CFP测量方法的。最后,将其研究结果与相关文献的研究结果进行了比较,并提出了研究结论和相关启示。     

Doing Well by Reporting Good: Reporting Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Performance

This article aimed to examine the impacts of reporting‐type corporate responsibility activities (CRA‐R) on corporate social and financial performance. Academic research has explored how varying attributes of markets, industry sectors and firms might shape corporate social and financial performance, but includes little effort to examine the impacts of different kinds of CRA on corporate performance. We build on debate about the value of firms' reporting activities related to corporate responsibility. Recent literature suggests that CRA‐R is superficial marketing or “greenwashing.” Despite this viewpoint, corporate reporting activities related to responsibility are rising. In order to solve this puzzle, this article explores the impact of CRA‐R on corporate performance. First, drawing from the institutional perspective, we propose that CRA‐R will positively impact corporate social performance (CSP) oriented toward secondary stakeholders. Second, combining the stakeholder–agency perspective and corporate responsibility literature, we motivate the hypotheses that CRA‐R positively influences corporate financial performance (CFP). Empirical testing with a unique dataset of large US corporations selected in the Fortune 500 support the proposed hypotheses. In particular, both corporate social responsibility and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) activities positively influence corporate environmental performance, and financial performance. In particular, GRI reporting is a strong indicator to impact both social and financial performance. Our findings indicate that CRA‐R should not simply reflect shallow motivations, but deliver value to noninvestor stakeholders as well as investors.     

The Effects of “Going Private” Using Private Equity: The Newly Private Corporation and the Dimensions of Corporate Performance

The trend toward private ownership of corporations prompts a reexamination of the dimensions of corporate performance under a governance system that includes powerful owners and a reduced public presence. Using insights from corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theories and informed by agency theory, we develop a model regarding the performance implications of public corporations going private through the use of private equity. We put forth that in general going private tends to result in greater emphasis on corporate financial performance and in lesser emphasis on corporate social performance (CSP). Yet several variables, including the firm's capitalization, its post‐going‐private exit strategy, and its managerial discretion, are proposed to moderate the negative relationship between going private and CSP.     

Rethinking the Corporate Financial–Social Performance Relationship: Examining the Complex,Multistakeholder Notion of Corporate Social Performance

The corporate financial performance (CFP)–corporate social performance (CSP) relationship has been investigated many times over the past few decades, yet the notion of CSP has generally been understood to be a single, monolithic aspect of corporate strategy. This article examines the common CFP–CSP understanding in three distinct ways: (1) by extending the evaluation of CSP as a complex, multistakeholder notion; (2) by analyzing CSP's relationship with the firm's financial performance at a given point in time as a lead (independent) variable in the relationship and as a lag (dependent) variable in the relationship; and (3) for both positive and negative stakeholder relationships. The results indicate that the employee emerges as the stakeholder group most strongly linked to CFP, followed by the consumer stakeholder. The natural environment and the community stakeholder group are minimally associated with CFP. General support is found for a CFP–CSP relationship at a given point in time, with some support found for CSP as a lead (independent) variable. When used as a measure of financial performance, return on assets is more often correlated with CSP than is return on equity. These results and their implications are discussed.     

Corporate Social and Financial Performance: The Role of Size,Industry, Risk,R&D and Advertising Expenses as Control Variables

This article investigates the role of commonly specified control variables in moderating the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP). In addition, there are separate measures for positive (strengths) social actions, and for negative (concerns) social actions. The results support the positive relationship between CSP and CFP. The best model, as determined using factorial analysis of variance, is one which has the following control variables: size, industry, risk, and research and development expenditures. In examining the CSP/CFP relationship, researchers must control for these variables, in order to properly specify the model.     

The impact of corporate sustainability performance on information asymmetry: the role of institutional differences

This paper empirically investigates whether corporate sustainability performance (CSP) affects information asymmetry (IA) for European firms listed in the STOXX Europe 600 from 2002 to 2013. We find a significantly negative effect of CSP on IA. By exploiting institutional differences between the European countries, we determine that the negative effect of CSP on IA is more pronounced in liberal market economies compared to coordinated market economies, thus pointing to a substitutive effect of CSP and economic coordination. Further, the impact is greater in countries with stricter disclosure requirements. In such countries, there is generally a greater appetite for company-specific information. However, disclosure requirements fulfil this need only partially because they concentrate on the corporate governance dimension of corporate sustainability. Hence, information on the social pillar especially matters to investors in a complementary manner and drives the overall effect. Our study contributes to the literature on the positive capital market effects of CSP by showing the proposed effect in European capital markets and the institutional determinants of its strength.     

Revisiting the Corporate Social and Financial Performance Link: A Contingency Approach

This study draws on and extends contingency theory, in relation to stakeholder theory to understand the corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance (CFP) link, by evaluating under what circumstances CSP influences CFP. Contingencies include stakeholder configurations/salience and crisis conditions. Using differentiated measures of CSP, this study examined financial effects of various specific stakeholder facing activities pre‐ and post‐crisis in the food/beverage and pharmaceutical industries, and in firms selling search versus experience goods. The results indicate that pre‐crisis CSP is related to post‐crisis financial effects, but the relationships are dependent on the interactions among the contingencies studied, so investments in certain social areas improve CFP, whereas others may hurt it. This confirms that a finer grained approach should be taken to the examination of CSP and CFP. On a practical basis, it shows that deep stakeholder knowledge and attention to complementary factors to CSP, such as advertising, must be understood, so CSP activities are of benefit to the firm.     

Measuring Corporate Social Performance: An Efficiency Perspective

Aggregation of corporate social performance (CSP) metrics poses a major challenge to researchers and practitioners. This study provides a critical evaluation of current aggregation approaches and proposes a new methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compute a CSP index. DEA is independent of subjective weight specifications and provides an efficiency index to benchmark the CSP of firms. Using CSP data from 2190 firms in three major industries from the Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini, Inc. database in 2007, our study presents the first application of the DEA model for CSP and ordinal data and opens up a new path for future empirical CSP research.     

Managing stakeholder pressures: Toward a typology of corporate social performance profiles

Why do some firms ignore some stakeholders while courting others? We propose two key drivers of firms' social postures and derive from this analysis a novel typology of corporate social performance (CSP) profiles. Although we expect that other drivers exist, we argue that a useful starting point for understanding any given CSP profile is to consider the pressure exerted on an organization by its stakeholders in conjunction with its level of resource endowment. Our preliminary typology identifies six distinct CSP profiles that reflect different opportunities and risks for stakeholder management: the CSP Vanguard, Opportunist, Generalist, Minimalist, Specialist, and Laggard. All else equal, the first two CSP profiles imply more nonmarket opportunities than risk, whereas we expect Laggards and Specialists to face greater risk in their responses to social and environmental issues. According to our framework, Generalists and Minimalists probably operate between these two extremes of business risk. Our conceptual analysis seeks to advance research and practice for more strategic stakeholder management.     

Responses of institutional investors corporate to social performance measures

This study represents a first attempt to empirically examine the impact of data relating to corporate social performance (CSP) on institutional ownership. Findings, though not statistically significant, are consistent with the hypothesis that institutional investors increase ownership when CSP data are positive and, minimally, do not decrease investment. Additionally, although fewer institutions invest in the on-average smaller and more highly-leveraged firms in the socially responsible group, institutions invest in about the same percent of overall equity, suggesting that they may be making some sort of risk trade-off.     

Beyond Association: How Employees Want to Participate in Their Firms' Corporate Social Performance

Although many studies have found a positive relationship between corporate social performance and employer attractiveness, few have examined how different forms of responsibility might mediate that attraction, particularly when those social practices afford different degrees of employee participation. The current study undertook this line of inquiry by examining prospective employees’ attraction to three common approaches to corporate social performance (CSP) that offer increasing levels of participation: donation, volunteerism, and operational integration. Unexpectedly, findings from an empirical investigation challenged the study's main hypothesis; that is, prospective employees were least attracted to firms that integrated their social and financial goals. Consequently, important implications and questions remain for both employers and business educators.     

机构投资者持股偏好、筛选策略与企业社会绩效

以中国上市公司为研究对象,采用最小二乘法和两阶段最小二乘法,借助EViews工具,检验中国机构投资者持股与企业社会绩效的关系,以考察机构投资者基于企业社会绩效的持股偏好和筛选策略,选取2005年至2009年沪深两市918家上市公司为样本进行实证检验。研究结果表明,机构投资者表现出对企业社会绩效的持股偏好,在制定持股决策时会考虑企业社会绩效,尤其是近两年的企业社会绩效。进一步对机构投资者进行分类研究表明,各类机构投资者持股与企业社会绩效关系的差异性较大,仅有基金表现出类似的持股偏好。机构投资者整体和基金的持股偏好是源于筛选策略的介入,正面筛选策略比负面筛选策略对持股偏好的影响程度更大,即机构投资者制定投资决策时以正面筛选策略为主要手段,负面筛选策略为辅。     

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting as Substantive and Symbolic Behavior: A Multilevel Theoretical Analysis

This article describes a multilevel theoretical framework that examines the multiple causes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in the social environment of business. We argue that substantive and/or symbolic reporting flows from individual‐, aggregate‐, organizational‐, and institution‐level phenomena, and is thus a complex outcome of CSR and corporate social performance (CSP). Theoretical lenses range from reinforcement theory at the microlevel to legitimacy and stakeholder theories at the macrolevel, and include a discussion of the emergence of lower‐level CSR‐relevant characteristics to higher level constructs. Our goal is to clarify how this behavior develops from microlevel, mesolevel, and macrolevel processes with a view toward assisting corporations to better enact CSR reporting, and their stakeholders to effectively promote substantive reporting behavior.     

The Relation between Accounting Conservatism and Corporate Social Performance: An Empirical Investigation

Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility have received much attention in the recent literature. The current study draws upon Watts, who recognizes that one role of conservatism is to reduce the likelihood of excess wealth transfers to its stakeholder groups and Post et al., who assert that a key aspect of positive corporate social performance is the (equitable) distribution of corporate wealth. Accordingly, this study empirically investigates and finds a positive relation between conservatism and strong social performance.     

The Mirror Effect: Corporate Social Responsibility,Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Firm Performance in Coordinated Market Economies and Liberal Market Economies

We investigate the classic management debate of agency versus institutional pressures through the application of the varieties of capitalism literature. In particular, we examine corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and their relationships with firm performance in two types of capitalist systems: coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs). We note that while the CSR literature has tended to develop a balanced view on the influence of agency and institutional pressures, the CSiR literature has tended to emphasize the influence of agency. The latter appears to be a result of the fundamental attribution bias, where irresponsible corporate behaviours are attributed to individual managers or organizations, rather than the institutional environment. Our results, which include five years of data across 16 countries, show significantly greater CSR and significantly lower CSiR in CMEs compared with LMEs. Further, we find a positive relationship between CSR and firm performance in CMEs but not LMEs, and a negative relationship between CSiR and firm performance in LMEs but not CMEs. Overall, our results demonstrate the influence of the institutional environment, suggesting that corporate behaviours mirror the external environment.     

企业融资约束与创新绩效:人力资本社会网络的视角

企业融资约束对创新绩效具有重要的影响作用。现有相关研究对企业融资约束与创新绩效之间可能存在的、更为复杂的非线性关系考虑不足，同时偏重从企业外部宏观的角度提出缓解二者之间消极关系的方法，不利于企业能动性的发挥。本文通过结合领英（LinkedIn）在线简历大数据和国泰安（CSMAR）上市企业相关数据，实证研究了我国上市企业融资约束与创新绩效之间存在的复杂关系以及人力资本社会网络在其中发挥的重要作用。研究结果表明，企业融资约束与创新绩效之间存在显著的倒U型关联，企业中高层管理者、科技人才的流动所形成的人力资本社会网络对企业融资约束与创新绩效之间的关系存在显著的积极调节作用。研究结论延续和深化了企业融资约束与创新的相关研究，并进一步丰富与拓展了人力资本社会网络在企业行为研究中的应用。     

Connecting the Dots: Do Financial Analysts Help Corporate Boards Improve Corporate Social Responsibility?

This paper presents an examination of the joint impact of board structural elements at firm level and financial analysts as market-level corporate governance (CG) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Our study contributes to the CG–CSR literature by adopting the bundling approach, a perspective that has recently attracted researchers’ attention as an answer to any heterogeneity and fragmentation in existing findings. It is based on an extensive sample consisting of 7,739 firm-year observations of US firms for the 2006–2015 period. The findings suggest that financial analysts complement the corporate board with more independence, gender diversity and a specialized CSR committee to realize a certain level of CSR performance of a firm. The findings also indicate that analysts substitute for those internal governance factors that are associated with weaker boards – larger sizes and dual-role CEOs. We also draw implications for research and practice from our findings.     

The impact of corporate social performance on the cost of debt and access to debt financing for listed European non-financial firms

This study addresses the controversial issue of how non-financial performance affects the cost of debt capital and access to it. The relationship between corporate social performance and two measures of debt cost (accounting-based and market-based) and the measure of debt access are analysed by means of a multi-theoretical framework combining economics with social theories. By observing a sample of listed European non-financial firms over an 8-year period from 2005 to 2012, we find a negative relationship between corporate social performance and interest rate. Consistent with this result, we find a positive relationship between corporate social performance and debt rating. Thus, corporate social performance has a positive role in reducing the cost of debt capital. Moreover, firms with better corporate social performance are more attractive to lenders in terms of leverage allowance. Overall, our findings provide deeper insight into the reasons why companies should improve their corporate social performance.     

The social regulation of corporate social irresponsibility: Reviewing the contribution of corporate reputation

Whilst it is assumed that stakeholders penalize and deter corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), instances of CSI persist. Correspondingly, the literature on social regulation—which describes how non-governmental stakeholders exert their regulatory influence on organizations—remains fragmented. To act as a springboard for future studies, this review examines the contribution of corporate reputation to our understanding of how CSI is socially regulated. Our analysis of a large (n = 448 studies) multidisciplinary body of literature unearths a set of nuanced relationships between CSI and corporate reputation. We synthesize a conceptual framework in order to map the diverse landscape of literature and its contributions. We then highlight important gaps among—as well as between—research streams to present a future research agenda. Accordingly, this review contributes to closing ‘the loop’ between CSI, corporate reputation and social regulation, thereby opening up new pathways for future research.     

中国情境下企业社会责任与财务绩效关系的实证研究——基于大、中小型上市公司的对比分析

本文以2012年发布的中国500强且在沪深上市的企业为大型企业样本,以中小板上市企业为中小型企业样本,选取各企业2010-2012年会计年报数据,运用结构化方程模型和多元回归分析方法,分别实证检验了大型企业、中小型企业承担社会责任对企业短期财务绩效和长期财务绩效的影响。研究结果表明:(1)无论是大型企业还是中小型企业,承担社会责任都不会引起其短期财务状况的恶化。(2)大型企业和中小型企业的社会责任与长期财务绩效关系的表现不完全相同,大型企业多呈正向关系,中小型企业则负向关系较多。(3)特别值得关注的是,无论大型企业还是中小型企业,对员工和顾客的社会责任与长期财务绩效都呈负相关关系。本文研究揭示了在当前中国情境下企业履行社会责任不容乐观的现状,同时研究结果对于引导企业履行社会责任,促进我国经济社会的健康和谐发展,也具有重要的借鉴价值。