Corporate Social Responsibility Change Research Articles

Shareholder Politics: The Influence of Investors’ Political Affiliations on Corporate Social Responsibility

Many institutional investors are active political donors, but the impact that their political partisanship has on corporate practices and policies has mostly eluded academic examination. As political donations can reflect investors’ views and values, we theorize that the nature of investors’ political donations can shape managerial decision-making in important ways. We test this idea by examining changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, an area where managers have a high degree of discretion over how they account for investors’ views and values. Our theory introduces two focal constructs: political position, which captures the average political affiliation of actors within a group, and political dispersion, which captures the variance in political positions across group members. After hypothesizing a positive relationship between liberal-positioned investors and a firm's CSR activities, we argue that political dispersion among investors mitigates this positive effect. To account for between-group dispersion, we also suggest that liberal-positioned investors have a stronger positive effect on CSR in firms with more conservative managers. Our analysis of 19 years of shareholder political donations data for 2,062 U.S.-based firms supports our theory. This paper lays new groundwork for research on shareholder politics in management, and contributes to research on investor influence, political ideology, and CSR.

Changes in Corporate Social Responsibility and Stock Performance

We study the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance by comparing the portfolio returns of firms with changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity. Using an extensive US sample from the MSCI ESG database, we find that improvement in the overall CSR is generally value enhancing. The relationship varies with CSR dimensions. More importantly, the relationship shifts differently for various CSR dimensions during the crisis period when trust in the society is low and financial resource is limited. Improvement in environment, human rights, and product characteristics shows higher financial returns during the financial crisis period, whereas the value enhancement of improvement in employee relations is more pronounced during the non-crisis period.

Mirroring the zeitgeist: an analysis of CSR policies in the UK’s food, soft drink and packaging industries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies in food, soft drinks and packaging industries to capture changes in CSR implementation given increased environmental activism. The paper takes an exploratory approach in reviewing CSR policy changes to explore to what extent companies change CSR policies with increased environmentalism.Design/methodology/approachA comparative website analysis was used to analyse CSR policies of companies in the food, soft drinks and packaging industries in the UK. The companies were selected for the analysis based on their annual turnover and 23 companies were analysed (seven for the soft drinks industry, eight for the food industry and eight for packaging industry). Five interviews were conducted with packaging and retail professionals, and the findings were analysed by using thematic analysis, which captured trends in responses.FindingsThe findings show that companies are implementing and communicating CSR policies heavily focussed on reducing the environmental impact of their work and matching social debates on human rights, with which traditional CSR policies (corporate governance, supporting local communities and consultation with stakeholders) are fading away. Instead, companies have shifted attention towards the gender pay gap, modern slavery and extensive environmentalism. The interviews with packaging professionals and CSR managers from the retail industry show that the packaging industry designs CSR policies in line with requests from supermarkets, which are, in turn, influenced by consumer activism.Practical implicationsThis paper shows the circular relationship between media coverage, consumer activism, which comes as a result, and the impact and changes this brings to the industry. To avoid reputation damage, companies should closely follow media debates to pre-empty consumer criticism and activism.Social implicationsThe findings show that companies are “mirroring the zeitgast” and going with trends to meet consumer expectations, which brings into question the sincerity of CSR policies and revives the criticism of capitalism and raises a question whether CSR is used by companies as a smokescreen that on the outset makes a difference to the society but keeps status quo intact.Originality/valueThe paper provides an insight into CSR implementation of three industries that faced heavy criticism from campaigners and the general public for their environmental impact. The paper shows how the CSR policy shifted to match this expectation and thus provides a good ground for studying the evolution of CSR using a case study from three selected industries.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

The world is undergoing significant changes in corporate social responsibility of business, caused by a number of factors and “challenges” of time, which raises the question of the fundamental transformation of CSR management principles and tools. The most significant in terms of influence on CSR and the opportunities that open up is the digitalization of public life: the development of the digital economy and its new tools (principles of a “distributed registry” or blockchain, online platforms, digital communications). At the same time, Russia has its own peculiarities, in particular, public-private partnership mechanisms are becoming one of the factors of changes and promising directions for the development of CSR. PPP models are becoming a tool for enterprises and large companies to realize their corporate responsibility in terms of maintaining, reconstructing and constructing social facilities (long-term social investments), while reducing costs for non-core activities by sharing them with the state. Modern society is highly committed to humanitarian principles, to promote which close cooperation between community and business is required. Such close relationship between society and business is translated into the concept of corporate social responsibility. Lately, the concept of social responsibility of business has become increasingly popular though it has not been clearly defined yet. The relevance of the topic is due to both increased attention to the issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and those requirements that are put forward in this area in connection with the spread of new technologies. The origin of interest in the topic is usually associated with the publication of H. Bowen's monograph. In the future, it is developed in the writings of A. B. Carroll and A. K. Bachholtz, J. Moon, D. Vogel and others. The ambiguity of the concept of corporate social responsibility causes numerous disputes both regarding the interpretation of the term and the most important business tasks in this domain. In the article, the author considers how the modern institutional environment, which is emerging in the new economy, affects the implementation of these tasks. Methodologically, we use the approaches of institutional economic theory and evolutionary economics. The new economy, in which innovative changes lead to a fundamental modification of the behavior of economic entities, puts forward new requirements for the activities of individuals and firms. The number of workers in the information sphere is growing, the requirements for the level of education of workers are increasing, and the information opportunities of top management are increasing. Under such conditions, many CSR tasks can be implemented by the company more efficiently and in fundamentally new forms: the internal control system is improved, the degree of transparency of activities is increased, the Internet helps to develop common standards, and information tasks are successfully solved. The rapid introduction of new technologies into the economic life has a tremendous impact on the company's activities in such a significant area as CSR. And although this influence is difficult to evaluate unambiguously and quantitatively, it is safe to say that it will be strengthened in the future.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Driving Dynamics on Firm’s Profitability in Ghana

This study analyzes the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and company’s profitability (CP) in Ghana with the utilization of mixed data, obtained from sixteen (16) firms' audited annual report and financial statements between "2005-2014", filed with the Ghana stock Exchange (GSE) and Register General of companies. We use lagged data from the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) to establish the relationship between CP and CSR. In addition 850 questionnaires were administered to the public for CSR level of awareness data. The data collected are being analyzed by the use of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) for the study. Results from the analysis demonstrated that the selected companies have contributed below ten percent of their yearly profit to support social responsibility programmes. The co-efficient of determination of the findings demonstrates the extracts that the logical variable account for changes or varieties in chosen companies’ profits after tax (PAT) are brought about by changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Ghana. It is then prescribes that regulations and laws to commit companies’ to be apparent, satisfactory consideration ought to be given to social accounting regarding social cost and to agree to the establishment of corporate social responsibility.

Is there a coherence between organizational culture and changes in corporate social responsibility in an economic downturn?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how different types of organizational culture (OC) manifest in certain corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and to uncover how the presence of certain OC types induces changes in CSR caused by drastic shifts in the economic environment.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis relies on a case study and uses qualitative and quantitative data obtained via interviews, employee survey and analysis of documents. The paper focuses on Ecoprint Ltd, a small printing house in Estonia, and analyzes its reactions to the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009 in terms of CSR. The authors then analyze the concurrence of these changes with its OC, based on a survey that relies on the Competing Values Framework.FindingsThe dominant type of OC in the organization did not predict all its CSR practices, but described rather well how adaptation in the sphere of CSR took place as a result of economic downturn. The case demonstrated that CSR activities that relate to dominant OC types are less likely to be reduced in a recession; moreover, some were even intensified. On the other hand, there were certain CSR activities that reflected less prevalent types of OC, nevertheless these were not withdrawn either.Research limitations/implicationsThe method used, single case study, serves as an exploratory study. The relationship between unchanged CSR activities related to less dominant OC types is not easy to interpret and needs further investigation.Originality/valueThere is abundant literature referring to a connection between OC and CSR, but related empirical research is hard to find. The current paper empirically explores the relationship between these concepts under the extraordinary economic situation that existed in Estonia in 2008‐2009.