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.     

基于社会网络视角的企业社会责任行为相似性研究

本文利用国泰安数据库和锐思数据库中2010年-2012年的我国上市公司管理层数据、公司财务数据,以及润灵环球责任评级2010年-2012年我国A股上市公司的企业社会责任评级数据,从社会网络的角度出发,探索我国上市公司社会责任履行行为的相似性。研究结果发现,公司之间存在的社会网络会造成企业社会责任履行行为具有一定的相似性。当企业越是处于核心地位,越是容易传播信息,控制能力越强的时候,该公司同与之相关联的公司在社会责任履行行为方面越是具有相似性。这一结论为改善我国企业社会责任履行现状提供了一个全新的思考方向。     

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Complementary Perspective of Community and Corporate Leaders

Research studies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) often focus on revealing corporate leaders’ attitudes toward various issues of CSR. The position of the present paper is that to understand CSR, we must grasp the collaborative perspective of CSR, and discern the attitudes of community leaders as well as corporate leaders. To this end, the study compares attitudes of community leaders with those of corporate leaders in three localities in Israel. The study examines various issues of CSR, highlighting the benefits to both community and corporation of reciprocal relations. Results from t‐tests confirmed significant differences between the groups. Some important implications for CSR particularly in terms of collaboration between community and corporation are discussed.     

媒体治理与企业社会责任

以沪市上市公司为样本,基于利益相关者理论,在综合采用熵权法度量企业社会责任的指标权重与指数法测算企业社会责任的基础上,研究了媒体监督对企业社会责任的影响,并考察了政府干预与行业特征在影响媒体治理效应方面的作用.研究发现:①媒体监督对上市公司的社会责任有显著的正向影响,并且相较于一般性的报道,媒体的负面报道在其中起到的作用更为显著;②考虑到广告、声誉等经济动机,媒体监督对企业社会责任的影响在竞争性行业、环境高敏感性行业以及消费者高敏感性行业中表现得更加显著;③在地方政府干预程度较高的地区,媒体在督促企业履行社会责任方面的监督作用会弱于市场化程度高的地区.     

社会责任视角下的民营企业软实力探析

通过剖析企业软实力的内涵和构成要素,发现企业软实力和企业竞争力两者高度关联,共同构成企业能力.企业通过履行社会责任,影响不同的利益相关者,从而获得利益相关者的价值认同,有助于形成企业软实力.通过对民营企业经营实践正反两方面典型案例的讨论,证实了具有社会责任意识的企业有助于企业软实力的提升,揭示了企业履行社会责任与企业软实力的传导关系.     

考虑CSR行为意识的闭环供应链运作与协调

在考虑制造商企业社会责任(CSR)行为意识及零售商CSR投入的情形下,研究第三方回收闭环供应链的运作及协调问题。分析了制造商的CSR行为意识与零售商的CSR投入之间的交互影响关系,以及二者对闭环供应链成员及整体绩效的影响。研究表明,制造商的CSR行为意识与零售商的CSR投入均有利于降低新产品批发价格、扩大新产品市场需求、提高废旧产品回收率,且二者具有相互激励的作用。虽然制造商的CSR行为意识会导致自身纯利润减少,但却能实现更大的社会福利、改善闭环供应链其他成员及整体的绩效。“收益共享-成本共担”契约不仅可以实现闭环供应链系统协调,还能促使制造商增强CSR行为意识、零售商提高CSR投入水平。     

Employee Volunteering and Social Capital: Contributions to Corporate Social Responsibility

As employee volunteering (EV) is increasingly regarded as a means of improving companies' community and employee relations, we investigate the contribution of EV to corporate social responsibility, specifically whether and how it contributes to social capital. We investigate the dynamics of EV in three UK companies. We explore the social relations and resources which underpin social capital creation; the roles of opportunity, motivation and ability in bringing the actors together and enhancing their capacity for cooperation; and the ways in which alternative EV modes inform the different dimensions of social capital – networks, trust and norms of cooperation. Our paper contributes to our understanding of EV and the factors that enable it to create social capital. Finally we assess the contribution of EV to the overall corporate social responsibility agenda of companies.     

企业社会责任行为中的战略管理视角理论综述

基于组织对企业社会责任(CSR)表现出的不同态度和内在动机,将企业的CSR行为划分为强制性、回应性、战略性和利他性4种类别,并在此基础上对相关理论进行回顾。通过对以往研究的比较总结,认为CSR行为在本质上作为企业的一种战略决策,受到内外部环境的共同影响并与之协同演进。由此,首次将战略管理中的协同演进观引入CSR研究,建立起CSR行为战略与组织绩效相互作用的协同演进模型,并在此模型基础上提出了下一步理论和实证研究的方向。     

经济政策不确定性与企业社会责任北大核心CSSCI

本文以2010—2017年我国A股上市公司为样本,探讨了经济政策不确定性如何影响企业社会责任。实证结果显示,经济政策不确定性越高,企业履行社会责任的程度越高。经过内生性处理和稳健性检验后结论依然成立。这一关系在内部控制水平较低和盈余波动性较大的企业更加显著,在国有企业、有政治关联和政府干预程度较高地区的非国有企业更加显著。经济政策不确定性通过影响企业面临的系统性风险进而影响企业社会责任的履行程度。研究结论表明,面对外部经济政策不确定性时,一方面,企业可能会根据自身经营管理的风险,将社会责任履行作为应对风险的一种工具;另一方面,政府有动机引导企业积极履行社会责任,以在经济政策不确定性上升时更好实现政府目标。     

Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Multilevel Review,Synthesis and Research Agenda

Small‐business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in quantity, but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a comprehensive review that identifies, synthesizes and integrates previous research, and highlights the knowledge gaps and the way forward. This methodical search of the literature helped to identify 115 multidisciplinary peer‐reviewed academic articles appearing in high‐quality journals over the 1970–2016 period. Using a systematic and in‐depth content analysis technique, the authors reviewed the articles and identified the theories used, the national contextual focus and the methodological orientations in these articles. They also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators and moderators of SBSR at the institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis. This review helps to identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. The authors offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help address the knowledge gaps and raise important questions for future research. The primary contributions of this paper are: delineating and summarizing a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and geographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributions in this field; and informing directions for future research. The authors propose a research agenda that is theoretically relevant and innovative, and call for context‐ and size‐aware research on SBSR, using small‐business‐specific methodologies and measurements.     

Supply Chain Structure Incentives for Corporate Social Responsibility: An Incomplete Contracting Analysis

Downstream firms increasingly recognize the importance of integrating social and environmental concerns with their businesses. As a consequence, they urge to create incentives for their suppliers to invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Contracts to provide these incentives are rarely observed in practice. If not totally absent, contracts may be incomplete, in that unforeseen contingencies or some CSR attributes that are difficult to measure may not be included in the contract. We show that incentives for CSR investments can also be provided through the supply chain structure, which consists of the distribution of ownership rights over the firms' assets of production, and involves horizontal and/or vertical alliances among supply chain members. Motivated by examples in agricultural contexts, this study adopts the property rights approach to study the impact of supply chain structures on the adoption of CSR activities. We show that the structure that best incentivizes CSR investments depends on the interaction between CSR vertical synergy, free‐riding, and countervailing power. One of the main findings is that the alliance between suppliers is beneficial only if the revenues generated by a downstream investment are sufficiently high. In fact, only in this case, the suppliers can appropriate a sufficiently large stake of the revenues generated downstream, thanks to their countervailing power. When the upstream investment costs become high, however, the suppliers will invest in CSR only if the downstream distributor is vertically integrated. The resulting structure of a cooperative will best incentivize CSR investments only if the CSR vertical synergy between the two tiers of the supply chain is sufficiently high.     

基于企业社会责任的财务能力分析

传统财务分析单纯从经济责任角度分析企业的偿债能力、营运能力、盈利能力和发展能力等财务能力,强调财务效率.在当今知识经济时代,高新技术迅猛发展,信息技术广泛应用,对财务能力的分析也已上升到了企业社会责任的高度.本文研究了企业社会责任的涵义、特征意义,以及社会责任对企业财务能力的影响和二者的辩证关系,从我国仍处于经济转轨的特殊时期,企业社会责任观尚未完全树立的大前提来看,我们应该逐步树立起基于企业社会责任的财务能力分析体系的宏观意识.     

Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study

Given the rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) globally, its local expressions are as varied as they are increasingly visible in both developed and developing countries. This paper presents a multilevel review of the literature on CSR in developing countries and highlights the key differentiators and nuanced CSR‐related considerations that qualify it as a distinctive field of study. This review entails a content analysis of 452 articles spanning two‐and‐a‐half decades (1990–2015). Based on this comprehensive review, the authors identify the key differentiating attributes of the literature on CSR in developing countries in relation to depictions of how CSR is conceived or ‘CSR Thinking’ and depictions of how CSR is practiced and implemented or ‘CSR Doing’. The authors synthesize from there five key themes that capture the main aspects of variation in this literature, namely: (1) complex institutional antecedents within the national business system (NBS); (2) complex macro‐level antecedents outside the NBS; (3) the salience of multiple actors involved in formal and informal governance; (4) hybridized and other nuanced forms of CSR expressions; and (5) varied scope of developmental and detrimental CSR consequences. The paper concludes by accentuating how the nuanced forms of CSR in the developing world are invariably contextualized and locally shaped by multi‐level factors and actors embedded within wider formal and informal governance systems.     

Political Corporate Social Responsibility: Reviewing Theories and Setting New Agendas

There has been rising interest in political corporate social responsibility (political CSR), defined as activities where CSR has an intended or unintended political impact, or where intended or unintended political impacts on CSR exist. Based on a survey and content analysis of 146 peer‐reviewed academic articles from 18 journals over the 14‐year period 2000–2013, this paper systematically reviews the existing applications of general theories (such as legitimacy theory, the resource‐based view and Habermasian political theory) within the political CSR literature. The survey indicates that the political CSR field is dominated by institutional theory and stakeholder theory, but future theory development needs to go beyond these theories in order to address a number of critical gaps. This review specifically points to several avenues for future political CSR research with regard to the individual level of analysis, domain integration and political CSR in multinational enterprises. The paper ends with a call for a new theory‐informed and pluralist research agenda on political CSR to integrate different perspectives and re‐examine the role of the state.