دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی منابع اقتصادی و مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکتی - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Our research suggests that firms condition their CSR policies on the availability of economic resources. Using the value of a firm’s real estate as a measure of exogenous shocks on the firm’s economic resources, we show that increases in resources reduce CSR concerns, while decreases in resources increase CSR concerns. The relative impact of resource availability on CSR concerns, however, depends on several organizational variables that influence a firm’s preferences for CSR investments. Furthermore, we show that firm reactions to increases and decreases in resources are not symmetric: resource gains reduce CSR concerns, but resource losses increase CSR concerns even more markedly. Overall, these results suggest that firms may treat CSR decisions in much the same way as other investment decisions.

5 Conclusions

Overall, our research suggests that firms regard adjustments to CSR concerns as investment decisions, influenced by the availability of economic resources. We show that resource gains reduce CSR concerns, while resource losses increase them. This finding contributes to the CSR literature by providing the first known empirical and causal evidence of a link from resource availability to CSR concerns. This evidence complements recent findings documenting a link from CSR to firm performance (e.g., Benlemlih & Bitar, 2016; Cheng et al., 2014), suggesting the possibility of a bidirectional process and possibly a feedback loop. Future research could fruitfully investigate the intriguing possibility of reciprocal causation.

Additionally, our results show that the relative impact of economic resources on CSR concerns depends on several organizational variables that influence the structure of a firm’s investment priorities (financial constraint, political climate, CEO compensation, and analyst scrutiny). These results extend past findings documenting a link between such factors and CSR itself (e.g., Preston and O’Bannon, 1997; Waddock and Graves, 1997; Harjoto and Jo, 2011; Hong and Kostovetsky, 2012; Di Giuli and Kostovetsky, 2014; Benlemlih & Bitar, 2016), suggesting that these factors influence not only a firm’s absolute level of CSR, but also its willingness to change CSR policy in response to exogenous forces.