Does capital structure influence the performance of corporate social responsibility? An analysis in companies of the world's largest economies

Abstract

Companies are under external and internal pressure to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. Positive and significant results of the relationship between CSR and financial performance are not always confirmed in empirical studies, demonstrating, thus, no consensus has been achieved in CSR literature yet. Thereby, we seek to understand the influence of capital structure on the performance of CSR practices, since there is a theoretical omission about intangible attributes. We formulated three hypotheses about the relationship between CSR and: the capital structure (H1); the debt financing (H1a); and the shareholder’s equity (H1b). We used a sample of 1,642 publicly traded companies on the 10 highest GDP countries. Using GMM 2SLS estimator, the results reveal positive and significant relationship between shareholders’ equity and CSR, while for the relationship between debt financing and CSR shown a negative and significative correlation. Our findings suggest that companies with higher scores of CSR tend to finance itself through equity. We found differences between countries related to the Capital Structure volume required to achieve a CSR positive index. Our findings provoke further debate concerning the reasons that conduct organizations to adopt such practices and foster new discussions about the aspects that involve social practices responsible adoption in companies.