Corporate Finance Commons^™

A Quantitative Analysis Of Corporate Social Responsibilities In Ghana, Musah Dumah, Juliet Yaa Boateng

Business Management Review

This study investigates the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on financial performance of banks on the Ghana Stock Exchange from 2019-2023. The research used a descriptive approach and the panel data regression analysis to examine how social, environmental, and economic dimensions of CSR influence Return on Assets (ROA), Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) and Return on Equity (ROE). The results indicate significant positive link between social and environmental dimensions of CSR and both ROA and ROE, which aligned with both the stakeholder and the resource-based view (RBV) theories as these theories talk about serving the interest of stakeholders and efficient …

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 …

An Analysis Of Corporate Social Responsibility And Real Earnings Management, Rachel Brassine

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Real earnings management (REM) is costly in the form of intense loan restrictions, increased interest expense, and public scrutiny. Nevertheless, companies still practice REM. Based on agency and stakeholder theories, this research predicts that as a company’s CSR score increases, REM will decrease, and this association will become more negative when a critical mass of females on the board of directors exists and when a board-level CSR committee is present. This study also predicts that when a company offers an executive incentive plan based on CSR metrics, REM will decrease, and the relationship will become more negative with a critical …

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Increase The Stock Price Crash Risk? Evidence From Indonesia, Raden Roro Widya Ningtyas Soeprajitno, Zephyra Violetta Setiawan, Ainun Na’Im

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

Indonesia fully supports efforts to disclose corporate social responsibility (CSR) to increase awareness of issues regarding the environment globally, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The connection between the disclosure of corporate social responsibility and the stock price crash risk is examined in this study. Furthermore, we analyse and check robustness and endogeneity issues to avoid variable bias selections. The study uses as its sample companies that are listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange and follow the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for corporate social responsibility. It is found that companies with corporate social responsibility disclosures have a positive …

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 …

Corporate Social Responsibility Influence On Organizational Performance: Moderating Effect Of Corporate Reputation Performance: Moderating Effect Of Corporate Reputation, Eti Jain, Anuja Shukla, Shiv K. Sharma, Arvind Kumar

Management Dynamics

No abstract provided.

Corporate Social Responsibility And Bond Price At Issuances: Us Evidence, Hong Zhao, Wei Du, Hao Shen, Xinting Zhen

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Bondholders are arm's-length lenders with limited insider information. In this paper, we explore whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities could work as an information channel for bondholders to better understand the riskiness of bond-issuing firms. We find a significant negative relation between CSR scores and corporate bond yield spread, especially for firms which invest heavily in diversity and community relations, suggesting that CSR firms are less risky. The result is robust to different model specifications and endogeneity issues. In addition, the negative relation between the CSR score and bond yield spread is significant only if a firm has a strong …

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 …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Ceo Risk-Taking Incentives, Zhichuan Li

Business Publications

We examine how firms adjust CEO risk-taking incentives in response to risk environments associated with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) standing. We find strong evidence that as a firm's CSR status improves (declines), increasing (decreasing) its risk-taking capacity, the firm responds by adjusting compensation contracts to increase (decrease) CEO risk-taking incentives (Vega). One channel of the adjustment is through stock option grants. Further analyses indicate that the positive CSR-Vega association is stronger in firms with better corporate governance and in industries where riskiness is more important. Our evidence indicates that firms are not passive in response to changes in CSR …

The Role Of Mutual Funds In Corporate Social Responsibility, Zhichuan Li, Saurin Patel, Srikanth Ramani

Business Publications

This paper examines the role of mutual funds in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using a fund-level, holdings-based CSR score, we find that CSR-friendly mutual funds improve firms’ CSR standings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher mutual fund ownership and stronger corporate governance. We further show that while CSR-friendly mutual funds have influence on almost all CSR categories, they focus on increasing CSR strengths rather than reducing CSR concerns. We also discover that CSR-friendly funds are more likely to vote in favor of CSR proposals, and that firms owned by CSR-friendly funds are more likely to link their …

A Learning Curve Of The Market: Chasing Alpha Of Socially Responsible Firms, Zhichuan Li, Jun Wang, Dylan Minor, Chongyu Dang

Business Publications

This paper explores stock market reactions to corporate social performance. We find that a value-weighted portfolio based on the list of “100 Best CSR companies in the world”, published by Reputation Institute, yields statistically significant annual abnormal returns of 1.63% and 1.26%, by controlling for Carhart four factors and Fama-French five factors, respectively (2.39% and 1.84% respectively for an equal-weighted portfolio). Moreover, such abnormal returns decrease as time goes, especially after the inaugural publication of the CSR lists in 2013. The paper also indicates that companies with better social performance are more likely to have positive earnings surprises, and that …

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 …

Csr-Contingent Executive Compensation Contracts, Atif Ikram, Zhichuan Li, Dylan Minor

Business Publications

Firms have increasingly started tying their executives’ compensation to CSR-related objectives. In this paper, we attempt to understand why firms offer CSR-contingent compensation and the conditions under which such compensation improves corporate social performance. Using hand-collected data from proxy statements, we find that this emerging compensation practice varies significantly across industries and across different CSR categories. Further, well-governed firms are more likely to offer CSR-contingent compensation, and such compensation does lead to higher corporate social standing. Such firms are more likely to offer formula-based, Objective CSR-contingent compensation. However, our results suggest that non-formulaic, Subjective CSR-contingent compensation also helps improve companies’ …

The Development Of Orphan Drugs; A Financial And Ethical Decision, Emmett S. Worth

Honors Projects

This paper explores the decision faced by a firm to invest in an orphan drug development project. Two primary areas of concern are considered: financial and ethical. In order to properly understand these two areas, the paper first summarizes the current development landscape for non-orphan and orphan drugs. Once the basic development structure is established, a discussion regarding the differences in the Net Present Value equation for a non-orphan and orphan product may occur. Once the differences in the financial decision are established, the paper will discuss the ethical considerations surrounding drug development and drug pricing. The combination of the …

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 …

The Impact Of Sustainability Reporting On Firm Profitability, Lancee L. Whetman

Undergraduate Economic Review

Using a hand-collected representative sample of 95 publicly traded American firms from various sectors in 2015-2016, I examine how corporate sustainability reporting affects the financial performance of firms. I find a positive and significant effect of sustainability reporting on a firm’s return on equity, return on assets, and profit margin in the subsequent year. However, this relationship is found only for firms with low institutional ownership. These results suggest that sustainability reporting would be a worthwhile use of corporate resources for this subset of firms. Further, corporate sustainability reporting is shown to be an effective substitute for monitoring by institutional …

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 …

The Risk Of Being Ranked: Investor Response To Marginal Inclusion On The 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, Ben William Lewis, W. Chad Carlos

Faculty Publications

Despite the proliferation of lists and rankings that recognize firms for superior performance, empirical studies have been limited in their ability to causally evaluate how inclusion for the marginal firm influences shareholder value. Using a regression discontinuity design, we address this limitation by examining how investors responded to firms that were just barely included or excluded from the 100 Best Corporate Citizens list. Contrary to prevailing theoretical expectations, our findings indicate that marginal firms that were included in the ranking experienced negative abnormal returns compared to marginal firms that were excluded. We discuss how these findings inspire future research on …

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 …

Essays In Corporate Responsibility And Finance, Mert Demir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1: The Effects of Corporate Social Performance and Social Norms on Market Valuation of Nonfinancial Disclosures Using a novel measure of the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by global companies, this paper analyzes how CSR report quality affects firm value when mediating roles of social pressure and CSR performance are considered. I find that firms operating in socially controversial industries enjoy higher valuations when they issue high-quality CSR reports. I also find that for firms with poor CSR performance, higher-quality CSR disclosure is associated with a decline in firm value, while …

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.

Ceo Power, Corporate Social Responsibility, And Firm Value: A Test Of Agency Theory, Zhichuan Li

Business Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether firms with powerful chief executive officers (CEOs) tend to invest (more) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as the over-investment hypothesis based on classical agency theory predicts.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper tests an alternative hypothesis that if CSR investment is indeed an agency cost like the over-investment hypothesis suggests, then those activities may destroy firm value.

Findings

Using CEO pay slice (Bebchuk et al., 2011), CEO tenure, and CEO duality to measure CEO power, the authors show that CEO power is negatively correlated with firm’s choice to engage in CSR …

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.

Micro-Loans: A Socially Responsible Corporate Investment, Olivia D. Marshall

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the socially responsible actions of corporations across America in the funding of micro-financing endeavors both of foreign and domestic intent as a means to alleviate poverty. Micro-loans are examined in light of the history of corporate social responsibility and the magnitude of impoverishment across the globe. The overarching purpose of this paper stands to prove that funding micro-loans is a sufficient means of acting socially responsible for corporations nationwide as a sustainable solution to poverty.

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 …

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.

Corporate Social Responsibility For Solving The Housing Problem For The Poor In South Africa, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Basheera Mia

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.