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This paper examines whether shareholders consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance when voting on corporate governance change proposals submitted by dissident shareholders. These proposals recommend changes to the corporate governance status quo and are made by dissident shareholders who are dissatisfied with the company’s existing governance practices.

Using 195 governance change proposals voted on during 2013, the paper examines the relationship between CSR performance (obtained from the MSCI database) and the level of voting support for these proposals.

This study finds that shareholder support for corporate governance change proposals submitted by dissident shareholders is positively related to firms’ CSR concerns, especially environmental concerns.

The findings suggest that shareholders may be concerned with the potentially adverse effects of weak CSR performance, especially poor environmental performance, and may support changes to corporate governance structures when a company’s CSR and environmental performance is weaker.

As the first research to examine the relationship between CSR and proposed changes to corporate governance, this study provides unique insights into shareholder perceptions of the value of CSR based on shareholders’ support (or lack thereof) for governance changes proposed by dissident shareholders.

Although most corporate directors face reelection by shareholders each year, directors of companies with classified boards are elected for multiple-year terms. Classified boards may engender managerial entrenchment, which may make directors less responsive to shareholders’ interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Alternatively, classified boards may engender a longer-term focus, which could make the board more willing to engage in projects with longer-term benefits, such as CSR. This study aims to assess whether larger boards, with potentially more diverse voices, may be positively related to CSR, and a larger board may change the classified boards/CSR relationship.

The authors examine the relationship between board type (companies with and without classified boards), board size and CSR for 4,489 firm-years (1,540 with classified boards and 2,949 without classified boards) from 2013 through 2015.

The authors find no difference in CSR strengths between companies with and without classified boards, but the authors do find that companies with classified boards have more CSR concerns than companies without classified boards. For all types of boards, a larger board size is associated with more CSR strengths and reduces the negative impact of having a classified board on CSR concerns.

Classified boards may be less responsive to shareholders’ preference for reduced company CSR concerns, but an increase in board size can mitigate this effect.

Classified boards may weaken a company’s CSR performance.

This is the first paper to consider the relationship between classified board and CSR.

The purpose of this study is to validate the Matten and Moon (2008) implicit-explicit corporate social responsibility (CSR) model by examining whether the respective differences in CSR practices between Europe and the USA reflect their respective societal expectations.

The principal component analysis is used to develop an innovative societal expectations index (SEI). This study tests the relationship between SEI and CSR through panel data and t-tests.

The empirical findings show a significant association between the SEI and all forms of CSR, which provides empirical support for Matten’s and Moon’s implicit-explicit framework.

This study is the first to develop an SEI to validate the Matten and Moon (2008) model that predicts implicit countries would adopt and conform to broader societal expectations for CSR, and therefore be more likely to embrace CSR activities than their counterparts in explicit countries.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

Prior research shows different associations between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and executive compensation in the United States versus Canada (i.e., McGuire et al., 2003; Mahoney & Thorne, 2006). It follows that these cross-national differences may be attributable to: (1) different compensation strategies; (2) other national differences; or (3) differences in the sampling and measurement techniques used in the respective studies. To gain insight into the factors underlying the cross-national differences, our study uses a single statistical approach on a U.S./Canada database to compare the association between CSR and executive compensation while controlling for size, industry, financial structure, and using common measures of salary, bonus and long-term compensation (LTC). We find that after controlling for size there are no differences in the association between executive compensation and CSR between the United States and Canada, and that LTC is positively associated with CSR in both countries. Thus, our findings suggest that previously reported differences in CSR between the United States and Canada are likely due to differences in the size of the firms used in the samples from the respective countries. Furthermore, our findings show the importance of the association between LTC and CSR for both the U.S. and the Canadian context. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The rate of alliance formation by firms has greatly increased over the past two decades. Congruently, firm interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives has also increased. Signaling theory suggests that firms may be increasing their CSR strategies in an effort to signal their willingness to operate within social mores. However, firms are faced with the problem of how to communicate their social commitment objectively to stakeholders. We argue that firms are forming CSR alliances in an attempt to signal an objective message to stakeholders concerning their commitment to CSR. To provide insight into these explanations, we compare the Total CSR performance (TCSR) scores of firms that form CSR alliances with those firms that do not. We control for firm size, leverage, profitability, and industry. We find that firms that form CSR alliances generally have higher TCSR scores, which suggests that one of the reasons that firms form these alliances is to publicize their stronger social and environmental records to stakeholders.

This research is one of the first studies to examine the effects of CSR disclosures on a firm’s decision to purchase back their own shares of stocks. Additionally, the authors examine whether the effect of CSR disclosures is stronger than the effect of CSR performance on the decision to repurchase shares. Examining firms in the United States, the authors find that total CSR disclosures and the CSR disclosures related to the dimensions of social, environmental, and governance are significantly and positively related to the number of shares that a firm buys back. Additionally, the authors find that the effects of CSR disclosures are stronger for total and the CSR dimensions of social and governance than for CSR performance. For the environmental dimension of CSR, both disclosure and performance scores are significant. This research expands our understanding of the impact of CSR disclosure by showing the importance it plays in the decision to buy back stock and implies that firms that repurchase their stock are more socially responsive than firms that do not. Finally, it contributes to the growing literature on how CSR disclosure has a different impact than CSR performance on firm decisions and outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic and financial hardships on firms, forcing them to make tough decisions regarding their social and ethical behavior. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and disclosures of the US S&P 500 firms. In particular, this study examined the relationship between both CSR performance and COVID-19 and the relationship between CSR disclosures and COVID-19 along with the dimensions of environmental, social, and governance. Using t-tests and panel data analysis for the years 2018 through 2021, we found that CSR performance and CSR disclosure increased after the start of the pandemic for total CSR and for the dimensions of environmental, social, and governance. We also found that CSR performance was impacted by a larger change than CSR disclosures for all dimensions of CSR. This study is one of the first to examine the impact of COVID-19 on CSR and helps stakeholders understand the role that it played on firm decisions. The results further illustrate the importance that firms’ managements place on CSR performance and disclosures, even during a time of significant challenge and uncertainty.