CSRHub for Research Purposes

Corporate governance is the new buzz-word in corporate world these days. It is viewed as a moral duty. It involves promoting the compliance of law in letter and spirit and demonstrating ethical conduct. The relationship between corporate governance and financial performance has caught wide attention of researchers in the last decade.

Numerous researches have been conducted in past to investigate this linkage, but there has been lack of conclusive evidence. The results obtained from existing researches have been mixed. In this paper, we attempt to investigate the impact of corporate governance on corporate financial performance in an Indian context, using a sample of 20 companies listed on S&P CNX Nifty 50 Index. Various tests like –regression, correlation, t-test and F-test have been performed using secondary data over a period of two years from FY 2010-11 to FY 2011-12 to study this linkage. We have also controlled for size of firm. We find that governance ratings have positive and significant impact on corporate financial performance. But like any other research, the present study is also subject to certain limitations, which should be considered while using the results of this study and the future researchers should attempt to overcome these limitations.

http://iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol13-issue3/A01330105.pdf

How do environmental institutional influences in a multinational enterprise’s (MNE’s) total portfolio of locations affect its social responsibility (and irresponsibility)? To begin to answer this question, I engaged in two complementary empirical research studies, each exploring a particular subset of the MNE portfolio environment-social responsibility dynamic.

The first study applies the concept of institutional distance from the international business literature to examine how the differences in formal and informal institutional environments across a firm’s full portfolio of operating locations can affect its social performance. I hypothesize and find that firms with greater informal institutional distance within their locations will have lower overall levels of corporate social performance. I also suggest that greater average formal institutional distance within the MNE’s portfolio will moderate the social responsibility benefits associated with greater international scope. These hypotheses were tested and found to be supported using secondary data on a sample of 408 firms headquartered throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.

The second study also explores the institutional environment of MNEs and social responsibility, but from a different perspective. This study looks at the influence of institutionalized corruption on firms’corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR). Consistent with institutional theory, I conceptualize corruption as having both a formal and informal component and hypothesize that operating in portfolios of locations with greater formal and/or informal corruption environments may lead MNEs to have higher levels of social irresponsibility. Furthermore, I explore the relationship between irresponsible behavior and firm performance, finding that higher levels of firm CSiR are related to lower performance. Support for my social irresponsibility hypotheses was confirmed using a sample of 699 MNEs operating throughout the world.

It has been noted that institutions matter to international business. These two studies help us better understand the complex institutional environments of MNEs and how specific institutional environments can matter to MNE social responsibility-related outcomes, providing guidance related to country selection for MNE managers concerned about maintaining high corporate social performance and minimizing incidents of social irresponsibility in their firms.

http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1538&context=etd

As Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure is becoming more common practise amongst companies, it is valuable to understand the underlying factors involved. The Goal of this thesis is to examine if the factors suggested by previous studies seem to have significance in a Finnish sample composed of 31 listed companies. As an ancillary research question linkage between Corporate Governance rec ommendation deviations and CSR ratings were examined.

The research was executed by utilizing raw data from Thomson ONE Banker financial database, public information available in the 2012 annual reports, corporate governance statements and company web sites. This data was used to construct 10 independent variables. The CSRHub overall rating was applied to form the dependent variable. The raw data was then processed using linear regression.

The results were limited as in many variables’case no significance was found. Age and profitability factors alone had an anticipated affect on CSR disclosure ratings, but other variables fell short when trying to demonstrate positive or negative significant linkages. Average age of board members showed negative significant relationship with CSR ratings at a 1 % level, profitability at a 5 % level.

The relative homogenous nature of Finnish listed companies can be argued to hinder the results. It is unlikely that the variables used in this thesis have such insignificant affect on CSR disclosure in all situations. It can be argued that the Finnish cultural environment is most likely the cause of the variables’indifference. Finland is seen as a “model student”of the European Union and this cultural atmosphere might be the single most powerful determinant. More important than any specific company characteristic. It would be highly interesting to see more studies thriving to examine this perspective.

http://herkules.oulu.fi/thesis/nbnfioulu-201305201282.pdf

The aim of this work is to assess the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance of the companies belonging to the RESPECT Index, the first index in Central and Eastern Europe comprised of companies that emphasize corporate social responsibility, transparency, and good investor relations in comparison to the CSR and financial performance of other companies in Poland that are transparent and have visible CSR profiles, but are not in the RESPECT Index.

This exploratory study will employ a number of methods and consider a num- ber of aspects. One aspect will be whether or not a company is transparent and visible enough to have a CSR performance profile and rating in the world’s largest database of CSR data (CSRHub, which includes data on 7,300 companies from 135 industries in 93 countries and 12 indicators of CSR performance). Another aspect will be to compare the ratings in CSRHub of those companies that are vs. those that are not in the RESPECT Index. The study will also con- sider whether and to what extent the companies have adopted sustainability reporting. Finally, conventional measures of financial performance will be compared. Differences between RESPECT Index vs. other highly visible companies in Poland will be explored and displayed in tables and graphs. Where possible and appropriate, regression analysis will be used to test for potential causative relationships (e.g. between sustainability reporting or high CSRHub rating and financial performance).

https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/fileadmin/einrichtungen/ells/SSC_documents/SSC_BOOKOFABSTRACTsmalll4.pdf

This paper contributes to the scholarship of CSR and sustainability reporting by testing whether greater data availability about companies leads to their having better CSR reputations and possibly CSR performance. The authors begin with a brief literature review to develop the hypothesis that greater data availability may be correlated with having a positive CSR reputation. The authors chose the international energy industry as a focus, since these companies were early adopters of sustainability reporting and have the potential to have widespread and either very good or very bad reputations. Leaders and laggards in terms of perceived CSR performance within this industry are identified using scores generated by CSRHub, a sustainability information aggregation service. A regression test is performed and the results indicate a significant positive relationship: the more data is available about a company in the international oil and gas industry, the better its CSR reputation tends to be. Since this study only considers availability of data, and not the quality or content of information, the key finding appears consistent with the old adage that “any publicity is good publicity.”The authors also share some observations about the characteristics of the reputational leaders and laggards and their reputations across various aspects of CSR. For example, consistent with previous findings, CSR reputation leaders are found to be older and larger, while laggards are newer and smaller. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for managers and scholars and potentially fruitful future veins of inquiry.

http://tennesseine.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-disclosure-better-csr-reputation.html

This thesis addresses the question what drives an organization to have Corporate Social Responsibility practices in place. This thesis is written within TomTom International BV who is a provider of personal navigation solutions. Based upon two different perspectives, the Institutional Theory and the Resource Based View and their drivers for CSR, this thesis attempts to unveil whether these have a relationship with TomTom’s social responsible behavior. Furthermore this thesis aims to answer the question what the current CSR practices are of TomTom and what the outcome is of those. The results of this thesis are based upon a single case study for which a documentary analysis is performed and interviews are conducted. Apart from that a benchmark has been performed to understand how the CSR strategies of TomTom and its competitors relate to each other and whether TomTom might have CSR practices in place to gain a competitive advantage. TomTom mainly refers to the fact that using their products helps customers to; drive safer, reduce their carbon foot print and lowering their stress; hence they put their product central in their CSR strategy. This is obviously a nice to have, but this is not why TomTom started to sell personal navigation devices. On the other hand TomTom does have social responsible products that might fit a proper CSR strategy better. TomTom’s CSR strategy is mainly driven by the norm and values of the policy maker.

http://dare.uva.nl/document/476945

Broadly speaking, goal of this research is to investigate the impact of environmental regulation on economic performances in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Researchers' findings vary from negative impact to positive one. This lack of consensus along with availability of large set of data motivates the long-run industry-level study to look into the dynamics of regulation-performance relationship from 1958 to 2005. Variables related to health and environmental regulations have been collected from EPA's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey, and OSHA's Management Information System. NBER Manufacturing Productivity database is the source of the variables related to industrial economic performance. Ordinary least squares procedure reveals bigger effects for EPA than OSHA, and smaller/less significant contributions to productivity in later periods. Evidence has also been provided to indicate that pollution-abatement spending only affected the measurement of productivity growth, with no real effect on the productivity of inputs actually used in production.

Evidence show that many firms are subject to intense public scrutiny with the increasing environmental consciousness in society. In response, management research and conceptual thinking on environmental issues has expanded from a narrow focus on the concept of pollution control to a broader concept of being socially responsible that combines environmental issues into functional considerations. The potential link between economic performance and environmental regulation and so corporate social responsibility works as a motivation to examine the determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Data on CSR rating comes from CSRHUB and Justmeans for cross-section and panel analyses, respectively. Firm-level productivity and financial data comes from COMPUSTAT. This essay involves performing probit, OLS, fixed-effects, quantile, and Chow procedures. The major finding of this essay is that bigger firms show better CSR performance.

Third and last essay of this study explores plant-level data on enforcement, compliance, and emission of pollutants with air pollution regulation to test whether enforcement is effective in inducing plants to comply, whether certain types of plants are more influenced by enforcement behavior, and to determine what other firm characteristics are associated with compliance covering the 1994–2002 period applying OLS, fixed-effects, logit, tobit, and Chow test procedures. Plant-level measures of air pollution enforcement activity, compliance status, and emissions of air pollutants during that period come from several EPA databases and firm-level data productivity comes from the COMPUSTAT. Results suggest that plants associated with firms that are making more profit or have more of any immediately negotiable medium of exchange emit less toxic inventory and air pollutants. Plants in violation with "voluntary compliance"as represented by TRI emissions are significantly less likely to comply with air pollution regulations, and plants owned by the firms specializing in paper and allied product or petroleum and coal product are less sensitive to other enforcement activity.

http://gradworks.umi.com/34/86/3486395.html

This research focuses on the link between quantitative sustainability disclosure and information asymmetry. It builds upon previous research which links information asymmetry with voluntary disclosure. Stakeholders from the financial services sector claim that sustainability disclosure needs to be more numerical and comparable between companies. This research covers 111 firms from Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden from non-service industries and studies how quantitative their sustainability disclosure is, and whether or not there is a negative relation with information asymmetry. The results support the hypotheses, where two out of three information asymmetry proxies have a significant negative relation with quantitative disclosure. Size is supported as a moderating factor. Quantitativity also proves to have a significant link with third party sustainability ratings. The direct link between quantitativity and cost of capital is not however supported.

http://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/69887/nbnfi-fe201106101728.pdf?sequence=2

Research by The Conference Board shows that many companies are employing their efforts towards a sustainable life style. A sustainable structural framework is useful to enable proper director oversight of corporate sustainability and its related issues. In particular, what appears to be broadly missing is access to sources of information and how sustainability should apply to businesses. Companies that decided to work and apply the precepts of ESG are effectively integrating social objectives into daily business activities. The enhanced sensitivity towards environmental issues convinced customers and stakeholders that this is the right way to follow for mixing good performances and profitability matters (i.e. financial indicators and non-financial indicators) for the common objective of achieving real sustainability practices.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2230170