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Full-Text Articles in Business

Prosocial Ceos, Corporate Policies, And Firm Value, Mei Feng, Weili Ge, Zhejia Ling, Wei Ting Loh Mar 2023

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 …


Social Performance Feedback And Firm Communication Strategy, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Yi Xiang, Yang Lan Nov 2022

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 …


What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope Jan 2022

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, …


Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim Jan 2022

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.


Socially Responsible Corporate Customers, Rui Dai, Hao Liang, Lilian Ng Nov 2021

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 …


Do Firms Manage Their Csr Reputation? Evidence From Twitter, Richard M. Crowley, Wenli Huang, Hai Lu, Wei Luo Sep 2019

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 Apr 2019

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 Apr 2019

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 …


Peer Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hao Liang, Hao Liang, Xintong Zhan Jul 2017

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 …


Corporate Donations And Shareholder Value, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog Apr 2017

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 …


Corporate Social Responsibility – An Idealistic Goal Or A Reality?, Singapore Management University Nov 2013

Corporate Social Responsibility – An Idealistic Goal Or A Reality?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Despite widespread discussion on CSR, there continues to be much disagreement around what constitutes CSR, and how to define it. In addition, the term is often used interchangeably with notions such as corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, triple-bottom line, sustainability, creating shared value, and in some cases, corporate ethics and governance. However, all of these ideas point in the same direction: a sharp escalation in the social roles corporations are expected to play today.


Stepping Up To The Plate, Singapore Management University Nov 2013

Stepping Up To The Plate, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Rajesh Chakraborti talks about how CSR is embedded in everything that Reliance does, in an attempt to limit poverty in India.


Moulding The Nascent Corporate Social Responsibility Agenda In Singapore: Of Pragmatism, Soft Regulation, And The Economic Imperative, Eugene K. B. Tan Jul 2013

Moulding The Nascent Corporate Social Responsibility Agenda In Singapore: Of Pragmatism, Soft Regulation, And The Economic Imperative, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper seeks to examine the putative growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Singapore. A key impetus for the nascent CSR movement in twenty-first century Singapore is the economic imperative. As a trade-dependent industrializing economy, the economic development drive coupled with the need for international expansion has made it necessary for Singapore businesses to be cognizant of the growing CSR movement in the western, industrialized world. The government supports the CSR endeavour with an instrumental bent, where CSR ideas and concepts are adapted, incorporated, and promoted in various sectors of the economy. This paper assesses the state’s active encouragement …


Examining The Chinese Approach To Crisis Management: Cover-Ups, Saving Face, And Taking The “Upper Level Line”, Lan Ye, Augustine Pang Oct 2011

Examining The Chinese Approach To Crisis Management: Cover-Ups, Saving Face, And Taking The “Upper Level Line”, Lan Ye, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In 2008, the Sanlu Group, a former giant in the Chinese dairy industry and a quintessential Chinese organization, was confronted with the melamine-contaminated milk crisis. Its products were blamed for causing at least six babies' deaths and damaging the kidneys of about 294,000 babies. Sanlu was criticized for its crisis handling, which resulted in its collapse several months later. Using the contingency theory of strategic conflict management and Coombs' typology of crisis communication strategies, this study explored Sanlu's crisis management as a mirror to understanding the Chinese approach to crisis management. Findings showed that influenced by political, social, and cultural …


Corporate Philanthropic Giving, Advertising Intensity, And Industry Competition Level, Ran Zhang, Jigao Zhu, Heng Yue, Chunyan Zhu Jun 2010

Corporate Philanthropic Giving, Advertising Intensity, And Industry Competition Level, Ran Zhang, Jigao Zhu, Heng Yue, Chunyan Zhu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This article examines whether the likelihoodand amount of firm charitable giving in response tocatastrophic events are related to firm advertising intensity,and whether industry competition level moderatesthis relationship. Using data on Chinese firms’ philanthropicresponse to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we findthat firm advertising intensity is positively associated withboth the probability and the amount of corporate giving.The results also indicate that this positive advertisingintensity-philanthropic giving relationship is stronger incompetitive industries, and firms in competitive industriesare more likely to donate. This study thus provides evidencesuggesting that even in the wake of catastrophicevents, corporate philanthropic giving is strategic.