دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تاثیر مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکت ها بر چرخه عمر شرکت - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess US-based firms from 2005 to 2015 to determine whether firms with better corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance will allocate capital through their life-cycle to better maintain or extend total assets. Design/methodology/approach – Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics social performance rating scores were used to measure CSR performance in an initial sample of 19,707 firm-year observations. Firms are first classified into stages including introduction, growth, maturity, and decline, and use multiclass linear discriminant analysis, the Dickinson classification scheme (Dickinson, 2011), and the ratio of retained earnings to total assets (RETA) as life-cycle proxies. Life-cycle was formulated based on a broad set of accounting data sourced from Compustat. Various corporate characteristics from the CRSP database were used to classify all sample firms into five equal groups based on their CSR performance. Findings – A firm’s equity and debt issuance assume a hump shape over the life-cycle under CSR practice, and higher-CSR firms face fewer significant issues as they mature; payout, RETA, and free cash flow decreased from high-CSR performance firms to low-CSR performance firms; and cash holdings also exhibit a hump shape over the life-cycle and higher-CSR practices are associated with significantly lower cash holdings. Originality/value – CSR performance is a useful predictor for forecasting firm life-cycle and superior CSR performance ensures efficient capital allocation throughout firm life-cycle. Furthermore, CSR practice is an indicator of firm life-cycle sustainability and indicates a firm’s future cash flow patterns.

5. Conclusion

This study examines the relationship between CSR performance and firm life-cycle. Specifically, I investigate whether CSR performance allows firms to extend their life-cycle by determining whether a firm’s capital allocation follows its life-cycle under CSR performance, including financing, capital structure, investment, cash holding, payout ratio, and FCF policies. Consistent with prior results, firm equity and debt issuance exhibit a hump shape over the life-cycle (Faff et al., 2016) under CSR practices. However, due to a decrease in investment opportunities, a firm with higher-CSR performance will issue significantly less equity and debt as it become more mature, while firms with worse CSR performance will issue more equity and debt. As a firm moves through its life-cycle, it experiences changes to its opportunities for development, corporate governance, and economic regulation, making the corporate life-cycle a critical factor in financial decision making. As many of these changes are largely irreversible, my findings show that in CSR practice, equity and debt issuance follow a predictable pattern over time. Mature firms benefit from increased exposure and recognition among investors, and tend to provide more precise information to analysts, thus lowering capital costs, reducing risk (Easley and O’hara, 2004) and reducing the cost of equity in the growth and mature phases (Hasan et al., 2015). Firms with better CSR performance face significantly lower capital constraints (Cheng et al., 2014), bank loan interest rates (Goss and Roberts, 2011), and costs for equity capital (El Ghoul et al., 2011). However, as they exhaust growth opportunities, high-CSR firms must enforce strong financial discipline while low-CSR firms significantly tend to extend capitalization during the mature stage.