Three essays on the corporate social responsibility and firm outcomes

Abstract

This thesis builds upon three separate papers that focus on how socially responsible behavior, mainly corporate social responsibility (CSR), affects firm-level strategies and outcomes. I first investigate how a firm’s corporate philanthropy (CP)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship changes as firms move through their life-cycle stages. Drawing from dynamic capability-life-cycle perspective, I find that the CP–CFP relationship is not monotonically linear throughout the firm’s life cycle, but changes from negative to positive from development to mature life-cycle stage. I then investigate the benefits of CSR in helping a firm increase its investment from an integrated information-asymmetry and stakeholder perspective. Different from previous literature that takes internal aspects such as financial capability as its starting point to investigate corporate investment, we argue that the external social-acceptance perspective is also crucial in determining a firm’s investment behavior. We find that the firm’s CSR behavior will help a firm achieve more investment opportunities and, thus, lead to a higher level of corporate investment. Finally, I link the firm’s CSR activities at home with foreign-market location choices. According to the springboard and dynamic learning perspective, we find that EM-MNEs need to accumulate the experience of doing CSR to enter host countries with advanced know-how knowledge. Using Chinese listed companies from Shanghai and Shenzhen stock market, we find strong evidence to support our argument. 该博士论文由三篇研究企业社会责任行为与公司行为的实证文章组成。首先，我研究了企业社会捐赠与企业财务表现在不同生命周期下的关系。基于动态能力的生命周期的观点，我发现企业的社会捐赠和财务绩效的关系并不是线性的，而是随着企业的生命周期演进由负变正。其次，我从整合的利益相关者理论和信息不对称理论出发探究了企业的社会责任行为如何帮助企业改善投资行为。不同于前期的从企业内部财务能力的角度出发研究企业投资行为的文献，我从外部社会利益相关者接受企业的程度的角度研究企业的投资行为。实证结果表明，企业的社会责任行为能够有效帮助企业获得更多的投资机会，进而帮助企业达到更高的投资水平。最后，我将企业的国内社会责任行为与企业的海外市场选择联系起来。基于跳板理论和动态学习观，实证研究发现发展中国家需要积累从事社会责任的经验进而更好地进入拥有现金技术经验的发达海外市场。我们利用来自于中国上海和深圳上市公司的数据提供了稳健的实证经验的证据。