دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکتی و سیاست تقسیم سود - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Using a sample of 22,839 US firm-year observations over the 1991-2012 period, we find that high CSR firms pay more dividends than low CSR firms. The analysis of individual components of CSR provides strong support for this main finding: five of the six individual dimensions are also associated with high dividend payout. When analyzing the stability of dividend payout, our results show that socially irresponsible firms adjust dividends more rapidly than socially responsible firms do: dividend payout is more stable in high CSR firms. These findings are robust to alternative assumptions and model specifications, alternative measures of dividend, additional control, and several approaches to address endogeneity. Overall, our results are consistent with the expectation that high CSR firms may use dividend policy to manage the agency problems related to overinvestment in CSR.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, we examine how dividend policy can play a role in controlling the problem of overinvestment in CSR due to agency issues between insiders and outsiders in socially responsible firms. We also explore whether the wealth created in firms with high social performance is distributed in a way that respects and satisfies the interests of all shareholders. Using a large sample of 3,040 unique US firms and 22,839 firm-year observations between 1991 and 2012, and after controlling for determinants of dividend policy suggested in the literature, as well as firm and industry fixed effects, we find that high CSR firms pay more in dividends than low CSR firms. This result provides strong evidence for our first hypothesis and suggests that CSR firms may use their dividend policy to manage their agency problems. This result also shows that CSR firms are not only socially responsible in their wealth creation process, but they are more likely to be so in the distribution of the wealth created. Furthermore, five of the six dimensions used in the analysis are also associated with high dividend payouts, namely, corporate governance, community, diversity, employee relations, and the environment. The only dimension associated with low dividend payouts is product characteristics. This is more likely due to the integration of research and development and innovation expenditures in the calculation of this score. In addition, by analyzing the stability of dividend payouts, we find that socially irresponsible firms adjust dividends quicker than do socially responsible firms; this provides support for our third hypothesis, which claims that dividend payout are more stable in high CSR firms than in low CSR firms. We finally show that firms involved in two controversial activities, namely, the military and alcohol, are associated with low dividend payouts. Firms involved in these two controversial areas might face high external funding costs as highlighted by Goss and Roberts (2011). They may prefer to pay low dividends in order to finance their activities internally.