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Corporate social responsibility and financial performance: the "virtuous circle'' revisited
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Corporate social responsibility and financial performance: the "virtuous circle'' revisited

Edward Nelling and Elizabeth Webb
Review of quantitative finance and accounting, v 32(2), pp 197-209
01 Feb 2009

Abstract

Business & Economics Business, Finance Social Sciences
We examine the causal relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance. Consistent with past studies, we find that the two variables appear to be related when we use traditional statistical techniques. However, using a time series fixed effects approach, we find that the relation between CSR and financial performance is much weaker than previously thought. We also find little evidence of causality between financial performance and narrower measures of social performance that focus on stakeholder management. Our results suggest that strong stock market performance leads to greater firm investment in aspects of CSR devoted to employee relations, but that CSR activities do not affect financial performance. We conclude that CSR is driven more by unobservable firm characteristics than by financial performance.

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401 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Business, Finance
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