When do Firms Invest in Corporate Social Responsibility? A Real Option Framework

Cassimon, Danny; Engelen, Peter‐Jan; Liedekerke, Luc Van

doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2539-y

Cited by 36 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Their time perspective dissuades them from adopting major innovations with long-term and uncertain impacts (owing to their shorter planning horizon and lower tolerance of uncertainty), and they decide to avoid or postpone them and focus on the present (owing to their lower ability to learn from the past). Having a linear time perspective, they do not perceive any opportunity costs of waiting (Cassimon et al 2015); thus, they delay sustainability investments and achieve better economic performance despite achieving worse environmental and social performance. Figure 2 represents these three groups of organizations that differ in relation to their time perspective, sustainable innovativeness, and triple bottom line improvements.…”

Section: Discussion and Research Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, the NPV approach fails to consider the value of flexibility and opportunities that sustainability investments may engender (Husted 2005). Accordingly, recent contributions have considered sustainability investments in terms of real options (e.g., Husted 2005;Bush and Hoffman 2009;Cassimon et al 2015). The authors of these contributions suggest that the price of the sustainability option is the cost of the investment, while its value consists in the assets that it creates and the right to exploit them (Husted 2005).…”

Section: Tolerance Of Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, if they consider the value of a project in terms of the access to resources and flexibility provided, organizations may change their evaluation (Husted 2005). Further, Cassimon et al (2015) suggest that unless organizations perceive the opportunity cost of waiting, which is related, for example, to lost opportunities to engage with stakeholders and the associated decline in their relationship, they tend to postpone such investments. Thus, differences in the level of organizations' tolerance of uncertainty in their evaluation of the value and opportunity cost of waiting with respect to sustainability investments may lead organizations to adopt sustainable innovations to different extents.…”

Section: Tolerance Of Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Sustainable Innovativeness and the Triple Bottom Line: The Role of Organizational Time Perspective

2016

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This paper studies the influence of an organization's time perspective on triple bottom line deployment through sustainable innovativeness. Although academics increasingly consider sustainable innovation to be an essential element in deploying the triple bottom line, the degree of an organization's sustainable innovativeness remains limited. Using ten inductive case studies based on the triangulation of data from multiple-respondent interviews and secondary data, this study shows that an organization's time perspective plays a crucial role in explaining the organization's degree of sustainable innovativeness and improvement of triple bottom line outcomes. Specifically, organizations with a longer planning horizon, higher tolerance of uncertainty, and greater ability to learn from the past develop a higher and increasing degree of sustainable innovativeness, allowing trade-offs between triple bottom line dimensions to be mitigated.

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Section: Discussion and Research Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tolerance Of Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tolerance Of Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sustainable Innovativeness and the Triple Bottom Line: The Role of Organizational Time Perspective

2016

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“…Socially responsible investment (SRI) is a set of investment strategies and approaches, which include environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) considerations to inform on investment decisions. For over 20 years, SRI has been a fast and steady growing segment of the capital investment market and a hot topic among academics (Perks et al ., ; Cowton, ; Friedman and Miles, ; Sparkes and Cowton, ; Kempf and Osthoff, , ; Capelle‐Blancard and Monjon, ; Cassimon et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Market Performance of Socially Responsible Investment during Periods of the Economic Cycle – Illustrated Using the Case of FTSE

Lodorfos

Dean

et al. 2015

Manage Decis Econ

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“…The latter are determined by efforts to manage CSR through a management system (Weber 2008;Cassimon et al 2015). Despite the increased recognition and emphasis on CSR as a topic and highly formalised CSR control systems numerous wellpublicised problems and scandals involving large corporations and Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) continue to emerge (Osuji 2011;Asif et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing well or doing good?

Looser

Wehrmeyer

2015

uwf

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of mission and value-set and the sociological tradition of the stewardship concept. This contrasts the extrinsically motivated approach of the large companies under research. In sum, this study showed that CSR is meaningful and justifiable even if it is not profitable in the first place.Zusammenfassung Verschiedentlich wurde aufgezeigt, dass punkto gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung von Unternehmen (Corporate Social Responsibility -CSR) intrinsischer Motivation eine nachhaltigere Wirkung attestiert werden kann als dies für die entsprechenden extrinsischen Anreize zu postulieren ist. Begründet wird dies vor allem dadurch, dass letztere, die von einer Profitmaximierung durch CSR ausgehen, als unlauter und irreführend eingeschätzt werden. Dies verdeutlicht, welche Bedeutung den Motiven im Zusammenhang mit gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung beigemessen werden muss -nicht nur im Hinblick auf die Gestaltung der organisationalen Gegebenheiten von CSR ganz allgemein mehr noch bezüglich der Effektivität der entsprechenden Aktivitäten. Die vorliegende Studie diskutiert diese Motive in vier Fokusgruppen mit je sieben Grosskonzernen und sieben SchweizerKlein-und mittelgrossen Unternehmungen (KMU). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass grosse Firmen vornehmlich extrinsisch motiviert sind und CSR als Managementfunktion ansehen. In KMU herrschen hingegen intrinsische Motive vor, die auf ein soziales Werte-Set des Unternehmers und einen Zusammenschluss von Tugenden und Mission im Unternehmen zurückzufüh-ren sind. Dies beweist, dass CSR auch ohne direkten Bezug zu Gewinnmaximierung oder dem Profitmotiv bedeutsam, gerechtfertigt und insbesondere vertretbar ist.Abstract Arguably, within Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) the intrinsic motive is more significant than the extrinsic because the former induces a stronger involvement. Others showed that a behaviour attributed to extrinsic motives is mostly perceived as dishonest and misleading. This highlights how important the underlying motivation is for the perception, and thus, design and effectiveness of CSR frameworks. This study discusses these divergent motives with two focus groups: together with seven ownermanagers of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) and seven managers of large companies. The results show that CSR implementation in Swiss SMEs is related more strongly to moral commitment than to profit-maximisation. Accordingly, small business CSR emerges from the nexus

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When do Firms Invest in Corporate Social Responsibility? A Real Option Framework

Cited by 36 publications

References 40 publications

Sustainable Innovativeness and the Triple Bottom Line: The Role of Organizational Time Perspective

Sustainable Innovativeness and the Triple Bottom Line: The Role of Organizational Time Perspective

The Market Performance of Socially Responsible Investment during Periods of the Economic Cycle – Illustrated Using the Case of FTSE

Doing well or doing good?

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