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A firm’s ethical behavior is commonly perceived beneficial to the firm and its investors in the literature. However, activities of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are often delivered with multiple purposes, and their expenses are aggregated with other expenditures in financial statements. These two features motivate the authors to hypothesize and find that investors’ ability to predict future earnings of ethical firms may not be improved through observing the CSR activities. The study aims to suggest that CSR spending should be expressed separately from other expenses in financial reports to help investors predict the future performance of CSR firms.

The authors use future (forward) earnings response coefficients (FERC) to testing whether current stock returns reflect correct information about future earnings. The basic specification of FERC framework, initially developed by Collins et al. (1994), is a regression of current-year stock returns on past, concurrent and future reported earnings with future stock returns as a control variable. A significantly positive FERC provides evidence that investors have rich and correct information about future earnings.

The authors find less future earnings information contained in current stock returns for firms with higher intensity of CSR activities. The association is also negative between current stock returns and future earnings reported by firms with a higher degree of CSR spending aggregated with selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A). In additional analyses, the intensity of CSR activities is positively associated the uncertainty of benefits, measured by the standard deviation of future earnings over the next five years. This future earnings variability does not exist, even though CSR spending is aggregated with SG&A, consistent with the basic principle that accounting expenses create no future economic impacts.

The authors contribute to the current debate over consequences of CSR activities and accounting for CSR spending from a different angle. A common belief is that voluntary disclosure on CSR activities would aid in reducing costs of equity capital and financial reporting errors. These studies provide corporate managers with good reasons and motivations to expect beneficial consequences of voluntary disclosure. The results show that general investors are less capable of predicting future earnings when there is a higher degree of CSR spending aggregated with SG&A. It also highlights potential problems in the disclosure of general-purpose financial reporting to accounting standard setters.

This paper aims to draw on the stakeholder theory to examine the association between corporate governance and social responsibility.

This paper hypothesized that corporate governance is positively associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR), and good corporate governance also leads to good social responsibility in the following year. Corporate governance was measured by using the corporate governance index provided by Brown and Caylor (2006, 2009). CSR data come from Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini (KLD), Inc.

Regression analysis documents significant evidence to support a positive association between corporate governance and social responsibility. Evidence suggests that good governance leads to good CSR performance.

The results should interest managers who engage in behavior leading to or maintaining strong corporate governance mechanisms, financial analysts who conduct research on corporate governance and firm performance and policymakers who design and implement guidelines on corporate governance mechanisms. Moreover, results of this study can increase individual investors’ confidence in investing in companies with stronger corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between a chief finance officer's (CFO's) financial expertise and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper's sample consists of firms from the 2005 S&P 500 Index. Data on CSR come from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD), Inc. Data on CFO financial expertise were had collected. Consistent with prior research, experience (tenure), education (masters of business administration degree), and professional experience (certified public accountant designation) are used to measure the CFO's financial expertise.

Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2005, it is found that CFO experience (measured by tenure) is positively related to CSR at a significant level. In addition, the results indicate that CSR activities are not related to the CFO's education (measured as a Master's of Business Administration degree) or accounting expertise (measured as certified public accountant designation). The findings suggest that CFOs with more experience engage in more CSR activities than CFOs with less experience.

This study is valuable for several reasons: First, the study contributes to both the CSR literature and the CFO financial expertise literature by delivering new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and corporate social responsibility. Second, the study provides useful information to boards of directors, corporations and investors on certain CFO characteristics associated with effective CSR. Third, the study provides empirical evidence to support the suggested shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co‐driver of a firm's long‐term strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between earnings management (EM) and subsamples of corporate environmental responsibility (CER).

KLD data are used to generate subsamples of environmental “strengths” and “concerns”. Differences in EM are studied across subsamples, using discretionary accruals to proxy for EM. The samples consist of 2,171 US firms.

Firms with at least one environmental strength do not exhibit statistically different levels of EM, relative to environmentally neutral firms, while firms with at least one environmental concern do exhibit statistically greater EM (greater income‐increasing discretionary accruals), relative to other sample firms. Further, firms with multiple environmental concerns exhibit greater EM than firms with a single environmental concern. These findings do not support the political cost hypothesis per the CER/EM literature, but they do support the institutional hypothesis (in the case of environmental strengths) and myopia avoidance hypothesis (in the case of environmental concerns) per the broader corporate social responsibility (CSR)/EM literature.

The findings are limited to US firms; results may not be transferable to other countries. KLD data are binary, and thus may not capture the full array of CER.

The findings may aid interested parties in detecting EM.

The paper provides a new testing environment for theoretical frameworks established in the CER/EM and CSR/EM literatures. Additionally, the findings differ across subsamples, suggesting that the relationship between CER and EM is asymmetric.

This study seeks to examine CSR theorists' criteria from the corporate executive's perspective. It aims to find out how corporate executives perceive CSR and how they would like to be perceived as CSR implementers.

The study uses Delphi research and data analysis to build up three sets of questionnaires. It was only the first set where the author introduced his questions but the other two sets were created from the executives' answers in previous stage. It is then all about executives' perception; no one has put words in their mouths. The study compares KLD (the famous research and analytics company) criteria which are used to celebrate annually the 100 best corporate citizens list with the participating executives' criteria.

The study found that executives lean more towards self‐regulation and self‐determination. Panelists disregarded any suggestion of regulating executives' salary/compensation as CSR criteria. They reject CSR criteria as a measure of good, bad, or ugly performance. They focus more on non‐profit organizations and their charitable contributions. However, the study was able to identify great agreement in the area of transparency, ethical practices, consumer rights, and diversity.

The study picked up its sample of executives from the high tech industry, mainly in Silicon Valley, California. The panelists did not represent a random and mixed sample of executives from different industries.

The study might be the first Delphi research conducted online to suit time‐constrained, busy panelists who know how to use the internet effectively.

This study aims to focus on developing the sustainability reporting index (SRI) with combined perspectives from varied social rating agencies, along with integrated combined perspectives from academics experts and Indonesian companies.

The first section discusses the theoretical framework along with the sustainability challenges faced by companies in Indonesia. The second section develops the methodology of the study to measure the SRI by considering practical and theoretical perspectives, starting from the identification of initial disclosure, selecting the final disclosure and developing the hierarchical framework. Lastly, the third section confirms the validity of the study’s framework by the exploratory factor analysis method and its comparability by comparing the content analysis result of the study with the Kinder–Lydenberg–Domini (KLD) method. The content analysis was used to analyze annual reports, sustainability reports and companies’ websites based on indicators found in the resulted model.

The main finding is the SRI framework (SRIF) of the study, which is built on the basis of the stakeholder relationship theory and is focused on three main dimensions (social, economic and environmental). Specifically, the framework consists of 17 indicators and 93 sub-indicators. On the basis of factor analysis method, it can be safely said that the study’s SRIF is quite valid. The high score of correlations between the SRIF and KLD results at the composite and dimension levels, along with the statistically significant results show that the study’s SRIF results and KLD results are fairly similar.

The present study has its limitation as it only gathers data from publicly available reports issued by the firms (secondary data). Owing to time limitation, primary data are not collected. However, this is also the strength of this research as it will allow investors to replicate the study’s methodology to measure companies’ sustainability.

The study is useful to organizations and statutory bodies toward finding a replicable method to measure the Indonesian companies’ social performance. In addition, the study also introduced the usefulness of the qualitative program Atlas TI to perform content analysis, the exploratory factor analysis method to ensure validity and comparability by comparing it to the KLD methodology, which is known globally as the most widely accepted methodology to measures social performance. Lastly, this study will provide implications to the Government to ascertain the level of SRI reporting among the Indonesian public-listed companies.

The resulted framework in this study simultaneously considers social, environmental and economic factors in the context of companies in Indonesia, while previous researchers have constructed reporting index separately (i.e. Sumiani et al., 2007; Zhao et al., 2012). Especially in the context of Indonesia, there is no such index simultaneously focused on the three main dimensions, namely, social, environmental and economics. The current study tries to fill the gap by using the constructed SRI index based on three perspectives combined, namely, social rating agencies, academic theorist and Indonesian companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance.

This paper performs an empirical test on the association between CSR and financial performance of a firm.

The regression analysis reveals a significant and positive association between CSR and financial performance. In addition, it finds that the age of long‐term assets is highly correlated with CSR.

This paper extends Cochran and Wood by using a larger and more recent sample to examine the association between CSR and financial performance of a firm. It contributes to the CSR literature.

This study aims to test Mattingly and Berman’s (2006) taxonomy of social actions and develops divergent expectations for corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions directed toward institutional and technical stakeholders, with an aim to determine when CSR directed to different stakeholders is most likely to improve corporate reputation.

A longitudinal sample of 285 major US corporations was used to quantitatively test the hypotheses. Data was sourced from KLD, Osiris and Fortune MAC.

Strengths in CSR and actions directed toward technical stakeholders influence corporate reputation in a more profound way, when compared to those directed toward institutional stakeholders. Contrary to the authors’ prediction, institutional concerns do not demonstrate a significant growth or reduction over the five-year period.

This study provides a longitudinal test of Mattingly and Berman’s (2006) taxonomy of CSR actions and makes an important methodological contribution by operationalizing CSR not as a continuum from strengths to concerns, rather as two distinct constructs.

Management practice can benefit from a more fine-grained approach to stakeholder expectations and reputation outcomes. The results of this study leverage relevant stakeholder impact while allowing firms to appreciate the change in CSR actions and to measure it accordingly, such that the undesirable status quo that leads to potential loss in reputation growth can be avoided.

As organizations explore ways to effectively engage stakeholders for mutual benefit, this research shows how firms can have a positive impact.

This study tests and extends theory through an integrated lens, built on the stakeholder and resource dependence theories, while directing management attention to the broader reputational outcomes of targeted CSR initiatives. It provides justification for CSR investments over time.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini & Co. (KLD) dimensions by distinguishing between corporate social responsibility (CSR) strengths and concerns and examine their individual effects on firm financial performance. Additionally, the study distinguishes between US domestic firms and multinational enterprises (MNEs) to provide additional insights and explore if any differences exist.

Data from the KLD and Compustat databases are analyzed for a sample of 562 US firms, of which 359 are multinational corporations, and 203 operate solely in the USA. A path analysis was used to examine the effect of CSR strengths and concerns on firm financial performance.

The findings show that increases in CSR strengths as well reductions in CSR concerns are positively linked to firm financial performance. The results also suggest that addressing concerns would be more beneficial to MNEs as opposed to US domestic firms.

First, it should be noted that this study is cross-sectional, thus limiting confirmation of causality. Future studies can confirm causality by conducting longitudinal analysis. Also, some country-specific regulations require firms to make certain CSR-related information publicly available. Future studies can focus on countries that have such regulations and make comparisons with countries that allow firms to decide for themselves whether or not to make CSR-related activities publicly available.

When measuring CSR, previous studies have combined the CSR strengths and concerns latent variables of the KLD database. This can potentially be a problem because CSR strengths and concerns are not meant to measure the same issues. By separating them into two distinct latent variables, the authors can better understand their individual effects on firm performance.

Despite the significant investment in research on corporate social responsibility (CSR), there still exists a lack of clarity in terms of how different types of CSR activities lead to the outcomes a firm desires with their investment in CSR. The purpose of this paper is to provide greater insight on the relationship between types of CSR activities and brand equity (BE). The authors develop and test a conceptual framework, which examines the unique relationship between each CSR dimension and BE, as well as the interaction of product-related CSR activities and employee-related CSR activities with CSR activities across the other dimensions.

The authors collected data from multiple secondary sources, including Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini (KLD) Research and Analytics Inc., Interbrand, Compustat and CMR. The authors used random-effect estimations to estimate panel regressions of BE as a function of the different dimensions of a firm’s CSR, interaction terms between CSR dimensions and product quality and interaction terms between employee relations and other CSR dimensions, as well as a set of control variables and Year dummy variables.

Based upon a large-scale panel data set including 78 firms for the period of 2000–2014, the results show that diversity- and governance-related CSR have a positive effect on BE, employee-related CSR has a negative effect on BE and both product and employee dimensions play important roles in the relationships between other CSR dimensions and BE. These results have important implications for both theory and practice.

This study makes several contributions to extant literature on CSR and brand strength. First, this study examines the impact of CSR on BE vs alternative measures of brand-related outcomes. This study uses the KLD database to determine scores for firm CSR activity. It is the first to use the extensive KLD database to examine the relationship between types of CSR activities and BE. Last, this study seeks to better understand some of the organizational factors which influence the success of CSR outcomes. Specifically, the research will examine the interaction of product-related and employee-related CSR activities with CSR activities across the other dimensions.