Relationship between CSR and corporate value from the ISO26000 and the GRI guidelines perspective

Abstract

This study focused on non-financial information in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to analyse: 1) the correlation between CSR activities and corporate value; 2) the differences between the CSR activities taken from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. We extracted CSR items and used a random forest to rank the CSR items by their importance to corporate value. We also selected CSR items based on their importance and analysed their correlation with corporate value. Our analytical findings suggested that 'dealing with biodiversity', 'community investment', 'dealing with climate change', and 'occupational health and safety management' have a positive correlation with corporate value. For our second objective, we observed a difference between programs, as CSR activities taken from the ISO26000 were perceived as qualitative activities, while those taken from the GRI guidelines were perceived to be quantitative activities.