The Effects of Corporate Governance and Institutional Ownership Types on Corporate Social Performance

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Size

“…The impact of firm size on CSR participation is also related to the issue of access to resource (Brammer and Millington, 2006). Larger firms are associated with greater resource-slack, and this was found to significantly affect their CSR commitment (Johnson and Greening, 1999). Smaller firms often have constrained or inadequate resources, which may make it unviable for them to engage in CSR initiatives.…”

“…By comparison, firms with resource-slack are better able to make charitable donations and invest in CSR initiatives (Johnson and Greening, 1999). Firms with higher cash flows can better respond to a wider set of stakeholder pressures, through discretionary activities such as CSR initiatives (McGuire et al, 1988), whereas firms with lower profits cannot engage in such discretionary behaviour, given shareholder and creditor…”

Corporate Reputation and Philanthropy: An Empirical Analysis

“…Recent evidence suggests that ownership exerts a significant influence on a diverse range of phenomena including impacts on firm financial performance (Shleifer and Vishny, 1997;Thomsen and Pedersen, 2000), strategic decisions concerning internationalization and diversification (Tihanyi et al, 2003), firm R&D and innovation (Bushee, 1998;David et al, 2001), CEO compensation (David et al, 1998), and their influence on corporate social performance (Graves and Waddock, 1994;Johnson and Greening, 1999). Institutional investors have been motivated to become more engaged with corporate management because of their increased visibility and because they are ''tied in'' to their investments in the sense that, given their size, they have reduced flexibility sell investments without significantly damaging their value (Ryan and Schneider, 2002).…”

“…The database disaggregates share ownership according to 32 different types of beneficial owner. Following, Ryan and Schneider (2002) and Johnson and Greening (1999), we created a variable, LONGTERM, that equalled the sum of the proportion of firm equity held by long term institutional investors. Pension funds, insurance companies and life assurors were classified as long term investors.…”

Corporate Social Responsibility of the Most Highly Reputed European and North American Firms

“…The first of these is the factors that explain why companies reveal or divulge information of a social nature (Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989;Pavelin, 2004, 2006;Fernández Sán-chez and Luna Sotorrío, 2004;Roberts, 1992;Stanwick and Stanwick, 2006), next is the motives behind spending on social performance such as donations, philanthropy, etc. (Adams and Hardwick, 1998;Amato and Amato, 2007;Millington, 2004, 2006;Navarro, 1988), and lastly, applicable in wider sense, a variety of principles, processes, policies, programmes and observable results relative to the company's relationship with society, which uses for its measurement social indices that may be provided by social rating institutions, such as KLD or EIRIS, or ad hoc indices drawn up by the researchers themselves (Beliveau et al, 1994;Hillman et al, 2001;Johnson and Greening, 1999;Mahoney and Thorne, 2005;Moore, 2001).…”