The impact of corporate social responsibility on financial performance: An inter-industry and inter-country study of selected companies from the tiger cub economies

• Main Authors: Calanog, Michelle Jane B., Cruz, Aaron Dayle S., Ting, Raisa Lenor Y., Yap, Melan Anthony A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Social responsibility of business; Corporations > Finance > Management; Accounting
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11027
• Institution: De La Salle University

In the past decades, a new trend has started in the world of commerce. Businesses have started to include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in their plan of action for philanthropic, ethical, legal, and economic reasons however, does CSR really have an impact on a company financial performance? This study aims to answer this question considering not only the overall impact of CSR, but also the fact that each country and industry has different characteristics and, thus, different impacts. This study contributes to the CSR literature a dimensional assessment of corporate social performance (CSP)-corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship through an overall, inter-industry, and inter-country analysis. Also, this sheds light to the study of the simultaneous relationship between CSP and CFP. The data used in this research are sourced from CSRHub, for social performance, and the financial statements, for financial performance - which are then examined through a 3-phase methodology: descriptive statistics, moderated linear regression analysis, and simultaneous equations model. The researchers found out that CSR, country and industry presence and the moderating variables in the study primarily affect company profitability and efficiency, the latter measured by total asset turnover (TATO) and return on assets (ROA). Environment CSR has a positive impact on both TATO and ROA and a negative effect on profitability. Governance, on the other hand, has a negative impact on efficiency as measured by TATO. Social CSR has no significant impact on any of the financial performance measures. Finally, it was also concluded that CSR and profitability have simultaneous impact. Thus, there is existing bidirectional causality between the two. Despite the mixed results, businesses must continue on their CSR undertakings. Adjustments in their implementation would have to be made in order to achieve both satisfactory CSR efforts and financial performance, fulfilling its responsibility to both the shareholder