The firm under the spotlight: How stakeholder scrutiny shapes corporate social responsibility and its influence on performance

Abstract

Since stakeholders cannot directly observe corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, companies attempt to back up their increasing sustainability claims by sending CSR signals. The environment in which signaling takes place influences the credibility of the signals. Among the factors that make up the signaling environment, the overall exposure of the company to different stakeholders (i.e., stakeholder scrutiny) has been neglected by the literature. Using signaling and stakeholder theories, we argue how stakeholder scrutiny shapes CSR signals' credibility. We empirically analyze a sample of 5762 firms across several sectors from 23 developed countries from 2013 to 2017. Stakeholder scrutiny exercises a positive effect on the credibility of CSR signals through a mediated-moderated impact of CSR (across environmental, social, and governance dimensions) on firm performance.

Unaware corporate social responsibility: impact of firm size, motivations and external pressures

“…The main methodological difference of our paper with the scarce existing literature, beyond the size and detail of our sample, is that we use an exogenous measure of NGO pressure, attack intensity by sector, whereas Murillo-Luna et al (2008) and Helmig et al (2016) exploit company self-reports on their perception of NGO pressure. As for Forcadell et al (2022), whose study concerns a sample of nearly 5800 firms in 23 countries, by measuring the pressure of NGOs by their number per country, without any indicator of their activity, they find, as we do, a positive effect on CSR along its three dimensions.…”

“…We also assess the influence of NGO campaigns against large companies in the same industry, due to the threat of also being attacked as well or the increased salience of environmental issues (Baron, 2016;Baron and Diermeier, 2007). To our knowledge, these results are new and original: contrary to the existing literature (Murillo-Luna et al, 2008;Helmig et al, 2016;Forcadell et al, 2022), we are the first to highlight a visible effect of stimulation by the action of NGOs of the CSR of companies, including the smallest among them.…”

Efectos de la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial (RSE) sobre la rentabilidad empresarial

“…31 No. 2 De este modo, los autores antes citados concuerdan en que se requiere un conocimiento más profundo sobre la naturaleza de esta relación y de sus factores influyentes, sobre el entendido de que esto contribuirá directamente en las prácticas de las empresas en cuanto a RSE, lo que va más allá de un requerimiento legal, pues impacta en la participación de los grupos de interés para afianzar la confianza (Dorobantu et al, 2018), mediante empresas que generan credibilidad (Forcadell et al, 2023) y divulgan informes de RSE de forma transparente (Koh et al, 2023).…”

Корпоративна Соціальна Відповідальність Та Прибутковість Компаній: Концепція Модерувальної Функції Репутації Фірми Та Доступу До Капіталу

“…Точка зору теорії зацікавлених сторін (Freeman et al, 2010) припускає, що КСВ включає в себе управління кількома зацікавленими сторонами одночасно. У результаті КСВ може пом'якшити ймовірність негативних регуляторних, законодавчих або фіскальних дій (Forcadell et al, 2023;Sang & Han, 2023).…”