Business Commons^™

Purpose In The For-Profit Firm: A Review And Framework For Management Research, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Anita M. Mcgahan, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose is a concept often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While some evidence has linked purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation, and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. We review literature streams that invoke purpose in the for-profit firm and propose a unifying definition. Next, we develop a framework to study purpose that decouples its framing and formalization within firms from its realization, thus helping …

Prosocial Ceos, Corporate Policies, And Firm Value, Mei Feng, Weili Ge, Zhejia Ling, Wei Ting Loh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines how chief executive officers' (CEOs') prosocial tendency influences corporate policies and firm value. We use individuals' involvement with charitable organizations as a proxy for prosocial tendency. We find that, compared to firms with non-prosocial CEOs, firms with prosocial CEOs have lower executive subordinate turnover, implement more employee-friendly policies, experience higher customer satisfaction, and engage in more socially responsible activities. We also find that firms with prosocial CEOs have higher value and lower risk, partly due to the corporate policies adopted by prosocial CEOs. These results are corroborated when we compare changes in corporate policies and firm value …

Impacts Of Distributive Comparison Behavior On Corporate Social Responsibility In Supply Chains: The Role Of Small Firms, Mingzheng Wang, Xin Fang, Zizhuo Wang, Ying-Ju Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: In this paper, we explore how a firm’s concern about profit distribution and the size of downstream firms in supply chains affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment strategy. Methodology/results: In a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one manufacturer, both players decide whether to invest to reduce CSR violations, and they negotiate over a wholesale price. Distributive comparison behavior makes the manufacturer compare the profit with his equitable payoff, which is determined by the supplier’s profit. Advantageous (resp. disadvantageous) inequality occurs when the manufacturer’s profit is higher (resp. lower) than the manufacturer’s equitable payoff. We compare this …

Redefining The Boundaries Of Firms: Insights From The Corporate Social Responsibility Of The Digital Platform-Based Firms And Stock Returns, Moo Kung Kim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

By using a novel dataset, platform firms (those that operate on apps and the internet as their main vector of operations), this study explores the boundaries of the firm through the lens of corporate social responsibility. By examining the CSR scandals of platform-based firms, the paper aims to answer: ‘How do digital platform firms affect the society and capital market and understand the welfare of stakeholders?’. To disentangle the debates in the literature, the study articulates the new framework of the boundaries and scope of firms by proposing broader stakeholders of firms.

This research attempts to elucidate the boundaries of …

Social Performance Feedback And Firm Communication Strategy, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Yi Xiang, Yang Lan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although corporate social performance has become an important measure of firm performance, there is little understanding about how firms respond to social performance feedback and how impression management may function as an important firm response to the feedback. Building upon and extending the literature on the behavioral theory of the firm and the strategic use of language, we examine how discrepancies between firms’ social performance and their aspiration levels affect how firms use visual expressions in their CSR reports. In addition, we argue that the relationship between social performance discrepancies and the use of visual expressions in CSR reports is …

The Effects Of Csr Reputation And Csr Crisis Response Strategy On Investor Judgments, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

I use a controlled experiment to examine, in the context of CSR crises, whether investors’ investment judgments are influenced by a firm’s CSR reputation and CSR crisis response strategy. I find that for good CSR reputation firms, the use of a rebuild or deny crisis response strategy does not lead to improvements in investment judgments. However, for bad CSR reputation firms, the use of a deny response strategy leads to improvements in investment judgments while the use of a rebuild strategy does not.

Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The article discussed why companies practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their meta-analysis of 200 surveys over 20 years found that CSR is often embraced as a “halo” strategy.

What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The classic question of why companies do corporate social responsibility (CSR) is central to much theoretical, regression-based, and experimental research. Guiding research into this question is a tripartite schema of normative, instrumental, and political CSR motivations that has become increasingly established in the CSR literature. This paper challenges the schema’s status as a typology of equally plausible alternatives through an integration and analysis of a worldwide literature of 120 existing academic surveys on CSR motivation. Rather, the paper reformulates the schema into a surveyed ordering of CSR motivations that might be called “universal” in having remarkable stability across time periods, …

Socially Responsible Corporate Customers, Rui Dai, Hao Liang, Lilian Ng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate customers are an important stakeholder in global supply chains. We employ several unique international databases to test whether socially responsible corporate customers can infuse similar socially responsible business behavior in suppliers. Our findings suggest a unilateral effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) only from customers to suppliers, an evidence further supported by exogenous variation in customers’ close-call CSR proposals and by product scandals. Customers exert influence on suppliers’ CSR through positive assortative matching and their decision-making process. Enhanced collaborative CSR efforts help improve operational efficiency and firm valuation of both customers and suppliers but increase only the customers’ future …

The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates how perceptions of corporate hypocrisy from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities connect the public’s ethical philosophy to subsequent positive/negative opinion-sharing intention. With special attention to deontology and consequentialism in normative ethics of philosophy, the current study empirically tests a theoretical model of perceived corporate hypocrisy with two causal antecedents (i.e., individual moral philosophy of deontology and consequentialism), and the mediating role of corporate hypocrisy between such antecedents and the publics’ subsequent communication intention (i.e., positive and negative opinion-sharing intentions) toward a firm. Results indicate significant mediation effects of corporate hypocrisy between personal ethical orientations and the …

Foreign Subsidiary Csr As A Buffer Against Parent Firm Reputation Risk, Nan Zhou, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the influence of parent firm reputation risk on the level of corporate social responsibility activities of foreign subsidiaries. We first argue that a strong reputation risk spillover occurs from parent firms to their foreign subsidiaries due to the high visibility of multinationals, the control of parent firms over their subsidiaries, and the liability of foreignness associated with foreign firms in host countries. Then, we argue that subsidiaries may resort to CSR in their host country to reduce the spillover effect. Thus, we hypothesize a positive relationship between parent firm reputation risk and foreign subsidiary CSR activities. Moreover, …

The Global Sustainability Footprint Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the emergence of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) around the world managing equity of over $8 trillion, their impact on the corporate landscape and social welfare is being scrutinized. This study investigates whether and how SWFs incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in their investment decisions in publicly listed corporations, as well as the subsequent evolution of target firms' ESG performance. We find that SWF funds do consider the level of past ESG performance as well as recent ESG score improvement when taking ownership stakes in listed companies. These results are driven by the SWF funds that do have …

Editors' Comments: Is Corporate Social Responsibility Research Undertheorized?, Heli Wang, Cristina Gibson, Udo Zander

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that has brought about both progress and controversy. Under the banner of CSR, we have made progress in addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges, yet corporations still struggle to figure out where, how, and when to devote their social efforts, and doubts abound as to whether corporate efforts are truly in the public’s best interest. Scholarly interest in CSR research has also flourished. As a pervasive topic in the business literature, CSR is being addressed not only in the management field but also in the domains of economics, finance, marketing, operations, …

Peer Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Jie Cao, Hao Liang, Xintong Zhan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate how firms react to their product-market peers' commitment to and adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) using a regression discontinuity design approach. Relying on the passage or failure of CSR proposals by a narrow margin of votes during shareholder meetings, we find the passage of a close-call CSR proposal and its implementation are followed by the adoption of similar CSR practices by peer firms. In addition, peers that have greater difficulty in catching up with the voting firm in CSR experience significantly lower stock returns around the passage, consistent with the notion that the spillover effect of the …

Do Firms Manage Their Csr Reputation? Evidence From Twitter, Richard M. Crowley, Wenli Huang, Hai Lu, Wei Luo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a machine learning approach to process 11 million tweets posted by S&P 1500 firms from 2011 through 2016, we find that poor CSR performance firms tweet more about CSR activities and use tweets that are shorter, and with more passive voice and extreme tone. Good CSR performance firms tweet less about CSR, yet gain twice more followers per CSR tweet than poor CSR performance firms. Good CSR performance firms also experience a greater decrease in institutional ownership along with higher increases in bid-ask spread and stock return volatility after joining Twitter than do poor CSR performance firms. Our findings …

Dare To Be Different? Conformity Versus Differentiation In Corporate Social Activities Of Chinese Firms And Market Responses, Yanlong Zhang, Heli Wang, Xiaoyu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Building on the literature on optimal distinctiveness, this study explores the effects of conformity and differentiation in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on the evaluations by security analysts and the responses of the financial market in general. We develop the argument that while conformity in CSR scope enhances analyst coverage, differentiation in CSR emphasis leads to more-favorable analyst recommendations and higher market value. This suggests that firms may be able to simultaneously conform in CSR scope and differentiate in CSR emphasis to achieve optimal distinctiveness. To further enhance our understanding of the variation in the relationship between conformity/differentiation and the …

Text Analytics Approach To Examining Corporate Social Responsibility, Nurul Asyikeen Binte Azhar, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow, Andrew Koh, Wan Ying Tay

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research article explores a text analyticsapproach to assess the prominence of corporate social responsibility in 554Singapore-listed firms through a content analysis of the news. Instead ofrelying on publications by the firms, third-party news coverage is used toreduce potential biases due to over-reporting. A dataset of news articles onthe included firms published during fiscal years 2015 and 2016 is crawled, andthe articles’ content is parsed to search for information related to corporatesocial responsibility. Graph theory is subsequently used to create acollaborative network of listed firms’ corporate social responsibilityactivities. The results highlight a more automated and scalable means ofassessing the prominence …

Reading Between The Lines: Not All Csr Is Good Csr, David K. Ding, Christo Ferreira, Udomsak Wongchoti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether corporate social responsibility (CSR), as evidenced in annual financial reports, is associated with a firm’s financial performance in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach: A word count approach of several key CSR indicators found in the audited financial reports of NZX50 constituent firms is used. Several variables are constructed that measure the presence of CSR within the annual report such as sustainability, responsibility, social, environment, diversity, employee and community, and eight other variables within the annual report that measure the penetration of stakeholder engagement. Control variables and alternative measures of CSR are also included. Descriptive statistics …

Cross-Country Evidence On The Role Of Independent Media In Constraining Corporate Tax Aggressiveness, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms from 32 countries, we study the relation between media independence and corporate tax aggressiveness. We measure media independence by the extent of private ownership and competition in the media industry. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm’s corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quartile of each country-industry combination, we find strong evidence that media independence is associated with a lower likelihood of tax aggressiveness, after controlling for other institutional determinants, including home-country tax system characteristics. We also find that the effect of media independence is more pronounced when the …

Keeping Investors Onboard: A Corporate Social Responsibility Crisis Response Framework, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There is evidence to suggest that managers use CSR reporting as a means to manage their firms’ CSR reputations. In this study, I jointly examine CSR reputation and CSR crisis response in the context of CSR crises, and how they can influence investor judgments and decision making. In particular, in the context of CSR crises, I build on situational crisis communication theory to develop a CSR crisis response framework which managers can use to examine and understand how specific types of CSR crises can influence their firm’s CSR reputations, which can in turn influence investor judgments and decision making. Following …

Future-Time Framing: The Effect Of Language On Corporate Future Orientation, Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog, Sunny Li Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how international variation in corporate future-oriented behavior, such as corporate social responsibility and research and development investment, could partially stem from characteristics of the languages spoken at firms. We develop a future-time framing perspective rooted in the literatures on organizational categorization and framing. Our theory and hypotheses focus on how companies with working languages that obligatorily separate the future tense and the present tense engage less in future-oriented behaviors, and this effect is attenuated by exposure to multilingual environments. The results based on a large global sample of firms from 39 countries support our theory, highlighting the importance …

When Corporate Social Responsibility Motivates Employee Citizenship Behavior: The Sensitizing Role Of Task Significance, Madeline Ong, David M. Mayer, P. Tost Leigh, Ned Wellman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Scholars have proposed that organizations’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts are often positively associated with employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and have invoked identity-based mechanisms to explain this relationship. Complementing these perspectives, we develop a CSR sensitivity framework that explains how task significance, a micro-level job characteristic, can sensitize employees to their organizations’ macro-level CSR efforts, thereby strengthening the association between CSR and OCB. Across three field studies, we find that CSR and task significance interact to predict OCB, such that an organization’s CSR is more positively associated with OCB among employees who report higher task significance than among those …

Peer Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hao Liang, Hao Liang, Xintong Zhan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate how firms react to their peers' adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by using a regression discontinuity design that relies on "locally" exogenous variations of CSR generated by shareholder proposals that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Specifically, we find that peers of a voting firm who passed a close-call CSR proposal experience lower announcement returns and higher following-year CSR scores compared to those of a voting firm that marginally failed a CSR proposal. Such effects are stronger in peer firms with higher competitive pressure, better CSR performance relative to the voting firm, and a …

On The Foundations Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and its country’s legal origin are strongly correlated. This relation is valid for various CSR ratings coming from several large datasets that comprise more than 23,000 large companies from 114 countries. We find that CSR is more strongly and consistently related to legal origins than to “doing good by doing well”-factors, and most firm and country characteristics such as ownership concentration, political institutions, and degree of globalization. In particular, companies from common law countries have lower level of CSR than companies from civil law countries, and Scandinavian civil law firms assume highest level …

Corporate Donations And Shareholder Value, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do corporate donations enhance shareholder wealth or reflect agency problems? We address this question for a global sample of firms whereby we distinguish between charitable and political donations, as well as between donations in cash and in kind. We find that charitable donations are positively related to financial performance and firm value, which is consistent with the value-enhancement hypothesis. This positive effect on firm value is stronger for cash than in-kind donations. In contrast, political donations do not appear to enhance shareholder value, but rather tend to reflect agency problems, as they are higher for firms with poor internal corporate …

Socially Responsible Firms, Allen Ferrell, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the corporate finance tradition, starting with Berle and Means (1932), corporations should generally be run to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) considers CSR an agency problem and a waste of corporate resources. Given our identification strategy by means of an instrumental variable approach, we find that well-governed firms that suffer less from agency concerns (less cash abundance, positive pay-for-performance, small control wedge, strong minority protection) engage more in CSR. We also find that a positive relation exists between CSR and value and that CSR attenuates the negative relation between managerial entrenchment and value.

Socially Responsible Firms, Allen Ferrell, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the corporate finance tradition starting with Berle & Means (1923), corporations should generally be run so as to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) considers CSR as an agency problem and a waste of corporate resources. Given our identification strategy by means of an IV approach, we find that well-governed firms who suffer less from agency concerns (less cash abundance, positive pay-for-performance, small control wedge, strong minority protection) engage more in CSR. We also find a positive relation between CSR and value and that CSR attenuates the negative relation between managerial entrenchment and value.

The Effect Of Bad Reputation: The Occurrence Of Crisis, Corporate Social Responsibility, And Perceptions Of Hypocrisy And Attitudes Toward A Company, Kyujin Shim, Sung-Un Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Based on attribution theory, this study examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and media coverage of corporate reputation, crisis, and CSR history affect the attribution of corporate hypocrisy and subsequently shape attitudes toward a company. The study found that perceptions of corporate hypocrisy mediated corporate reputation and attitudes toward a company during a crisis. The study suggested that CSR might be utilized best when a company has a good reputation with no crisis, whereas corporate hypocrisy is perceived most when a bad reputation and/or a company crisis lead the public to infer ulterior motives in CSR. Theoretical and practical implications …

The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

This study investigates how perceptions of corporate hypocrisy from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities connect the public's ethical philosphy to subsequent positive/negative opinion-sharing intention. With special attention to deontology and consequentialism in normative ethics of philosophy, the current study empirically tests a theoretical model of perceived corporate hypocrisy with two causal antecedents (i.e., individual moral philosophy of deontology and consequentialism), and the mediating role of corporate hypocrisy between such antecedents and the publics' subsequent communication intention (i.e., positive and negative opinion-sharing intentions) toward a firm. Results indicate significant mediation effects of corporate hypocrisy between personal ethical orientations and the …

Firm Litigation Risk And The Insurance Value Of Corporate Social Performance, Ping-Sheng Koh, Cuili Qian, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper advances the risk management perspective that superior social performance enhances firm value by serving as an ex ante valuable insurance mechanism. We posit that good social performance is more valuable as an insurance mechanism for firms with higher litigation risks. Moreover, value generation of corporate social performance (CSP) depends on whether a firm has gained pragmatic legitimacy (i.e., a firm's financial health) and moral legitimacy (i.e., whether or not a firm operates in a socially contested industry) among its stakeholders. We find that the value of CSP as insurance against litigation risk is practically significant, adding 2 to …