How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

Chatterji, Aaron; Levine, David I.; Toffel, Michael W.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.993094

Cited by 280 publications

(367 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In addition, the statistically significant positive correlations between the six stakeholder dimensions can, at a minimum, be interpreted as generally satisfactory coefficients of generalizability (Orlitzky & Benjamin, 2001;Traub, 1994). Consistent with other studies (Chatterji, Levine, & Toffel, 2009;Sharfman, 1996), the significantly positive correlations in the lower right-hand corner of Table 1 can be interpreted as indicative of the concurrent validity of the CSP proxies.…”

Section: Hlmsupporting

confidence: 88%

Unpacking the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance: A Multilevel, Multistakeholder, and Multimethod Analysis

et al. 2015

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The question of what drives corporate social performance (CSP) has become a vital concern for many managers and researchers of large corporations. This study addresses this question by adopting a multilevel, multistakeholder, and multimethod approach to theorize and estimate the relative influence of macro (national business system and country), meso (industry), and micro (firm-level) factors on CSP. Applying three different methods of variance decomposition analysis to an international sample of 2,060 large public companies over a time span of 5 years, our results show that firm-level factors explain the largest proportion of variance in aggregate CSP as well as CSP oriented toward communities, the natural environment, and employees. These results support our hypotheses according to which CSP is not primarily driven by macrolevel or mesolevel factors, except for shareholderoriented CSP, which is relatively more influenced by country-level factors. As a whole, our findings also point to the value of subdividing CSP into its stakeholder-specific components as this disaggregation allows for a more careful examination of distinct drivers of distinct aspects of CSP.Keywords: Corporate social performance; corporate social responsibility; decomposition of variance; hierarchical linear modeling; stakeholders; variance components analysis.Abbreviations: ANOVA = analysis of variance; CSP = corporate social performance; HLM = hierarchical linear modeling; MLE = maximum likelihood estimation; NBS = national business system; REMLE = restricted maximum likelihood estimation; VCA = variance components analysis.Unpacking 2

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Section: Hlmsupporting

confidence: 88%

Unpacking the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance: A Multilevel, Multistakeholder, and Multimethod Analysis

et al. 2015

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“…Before we review a variety of CSR and sustainability performance measurements, it is important to acknowledge that efforts to measure CSR and sustainability performances are not without critics (Porter and Kramer 2006;Chatterji and Levine 2006;Chatterji et al 2009). While we do not contend that measurements like the DJSI and Global 100 are without flaws, we propose that when these measurements (and their differing underlying methodological approaches) are gathered and considered as a collection, they can serve as useful performance indicator.…”

Section: Scandinavian Csr and Sustainability Performancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Scandinavia: An Overview

2014

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Scandinavia is routinely cited as a global leader in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. In this article, we explore the foundation for this claim while also exploring potential contributing factors. We consider the deep-seated traditions of stakeholder engagement across Scandinavia including the claim that the recent concept of ''creating shared value'' has Scandinavian origins, institutional and cultural factors that encourage strong CSR and sustainability performances, and the recent phenomenon of movement from implicit to explicit CSR in a Scandinavian context and what this may entail. In sum, we depict the state of the art in CSR and sustainability in Scandinavia. We intend for this to serve as a basis to help establish a globally recognized research paradigm dedicated to considering CSR and sustainability in a Scandinavian context.

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“…Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research and Analytics (KLD) attract considerable attention and publicity worldwide (Chatterji et al, 2009), They seek to make corporate social initiatives more transparent by analyzing companies' plans and investments in the social and environmental domain, and as such rely, at least partly, on company-provided CSR disclosures. Similarly, disclosure appears to play a role in company inclusion in socially responsible indexes such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good (Cho, Guidry, Hageman, and Patten, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

CSR disclosure: the more things change…?

Cho

Michelon

Patten

et al. 2015

Accounting, Auditing &Amp; Accountability Journal

287

224

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Purpose -CSR disclosure is receiving increased attention from the mainstream accounting research community. In general, this recently published research has failed to engage significantly with prior CSRthemed studies. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it examines whether more recent CSR reporting differs from that of the 1970s. Second, it investigates whether one of the major findings of prior CSR research -that disclosure appears to be largely a function of exposure to legitimacy factorscontinues to hold in more recent reporting. Third, it examines whether, as argued within the more recent CSR-themed studies, disclosure is valued by market participants.Design/methodology/approach -Using Fortune 500 data from the late 1970s (from Ernst & Ernst, 1978) and a more recent sample (2010), we identify differences in CSR disclosure by computing adequate measures in terms of disclosure breadth and comparing them for any potential changes in the influence of legitimacy factors between 1977 and 2010. In the second stage of our analysis, we use a standard valuation model to compare the association between CSR and firm value between the two time periods.Findings -We first find that the breadth of CSR disclosure increased significantly, with respect to both environmental and social information provision. Second, we find that the relationship among legitimacy factors and CSR disclosure does not differ across our two time periods. However, our analysis focusing on environmental disclosure provides evidence that industry membership is less powerfully related to differences in reporting, but only for the weighted disclosure score. Finally, our results indicate that CSR disclosure, in apparent contrast to the arguments of the more recent mainstream investigations, is not positively valued by investors.Research limitations/implications -We explore changes in CSR disclosure only for industrial firms and as such we cannot generalize findings to companies in other industries. Similarly, we focus only on companies in the United States while different relationships may hold in other countries. Further, our disclosure metrics are limited by the availability of firm-specific information provided by Ernst & Ernst. Limitations aside, however, our findings appear to suggest that the failure of the new wave of CSR research in the mainstream accounting community to acknowledge and consider prior research into social and environmental accounting is potentially troublesome. Specifically, recent CSR disclosure research published in mainstream journals often lends credence to voluntary disclosure arguments that ignore previous contradictory findings and well-established alternative explanations for observed empirical relationships.Practical implications -This paper provides supporting evidence that the unquestioned acceptance by the new wave of CSR researchers that the disclosure is about informing investors as opposed to being a tool of legitimation and image enhancement makes it less likely that such disclosure will ever mov...

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How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

Cited by 280 publications

References 49 publications

Unpacking the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance: A Multilevel, Multistakeholder, and Multimethod Analysis

Unpacking the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance: A Multilevel, Multistakeholder, and Multimethod Analysis

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Scandinavia: An Overview

CSR disclosure: the more things change…?

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