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The purpose of this study is to investigate the role and impact of state regulation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending on company actions and to examine whether making mandatory CSR encourages businesses to engage in social welfare projects. Additionally, the authors also investigate whether these CSR expenditures can enable India to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030.

CSR expenditure data from the government repository of 22,531 eligible companies in India were studied from FY2014–2015 to FY2019–2020. CSR spending is further classified according to development areas of Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013, and mapped with the SDGs to see which ones the corporations have prioritized.

CSR spending increased from INR 10,066 crore in 2014–2015 to INR 24,689 crore in 2019–2020. Companies have prioritized CSR expenditure on education, followed by health care and rural development. The number of companies spending more than the mandated expenditure increased by around 75% from 2014–2015 to 2019–2020. However, the “comply or explain” approach of the law has led to a major number of companies spending zero on CSR. Companies have generally concentrated on moving CSR funds to designated funds rather than using them for capacity development to instill social responsibility culture.

This study provides evidence of the impact of mandatory CSR expenditure on welfare activities and SDGs. Unlike previous research, the results of this study are based on CSR expenditures rather than voluntary CSR scores.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure and business responsibility report (BRR) on a firm’s financial performance. Additionally, the study explores whether CSR expenditure and firm performance are related linearly or otherwise. The study also assesses the influence of mandating CSR expenditure on a firm’s performance.

The study is set in India and uses a nine-year data set from 165 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Data compilation and analysis are done by using content analysis and panel data regressions.

The main findings of the study are that the effect of CSR expenditure on firm performance in India is non-linear and can be characterized as parabolic for investigated firms. While some performance indicators suggest a U-shaped relationship, others show an inverted U-type pattern, making a definitive conclusion elusive in either direction. BRR scores themselves have a positive impact on firm performance. Mandatory CSR expenditure affects the financial performance negatively, but the market performance improves in general.

The study provides new insights on the relationship between CSR expenditure, BRR scores and firm performance from India, which is not only a notable emerging market but also has other gripping characteristics. It has a prolific history of philanthropy, and yet, it is the first country in the world to mandate CSR expenditure in recent times. The equation between reported economic progress and general quality of life remains intriguing, and yet the number of studies on the effects of CSR expenditure on firm performance are no match to the volume of ongoing and completed works in more developed markets. This study attempts to trim the gap and provide some useful insights for managers, policymakers and stakeholders, apart from prompting further research.

The authors investigate the association of the constructed corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures with the banks’ profitability, social contributions and CSR spending as well as the market reaction to CSR spending.

Using textual analysis of the CSR reports of banks listed on the Chinese market, the authors construct CSR measures in six domains: business, environment, human rights, corporate governance, charity and social capital. Our textual-based CSR measures contain substantial and valuable information beyond what Rankins CSR ratings offer.

The findings suggest that banks with stronger engagements and interests in the business-related CSR domain experience higher profitability, while those that are more committed to the corporate governance and charity-related domains create larger social contributions. Banks tend to incur higher CSR spending when they are more active in corporate governance. Although the stock market reacts positively to CSR expenditures, the reaction is less favorable for banks with CSR expenditures above the industry norm.

This study offers insights to policymakers of the regulatory bodies and the banks in China. To enhance the financial safety and soundness of the banking system, the regulatory bodies should encourage banks to strategically allocate corporate resources to achieve higher CSR ratings and engage more business-related CSR activities. To create larger social values, bank management should invest more in philanthropic CSR initiatives such as corporate governance and charity activities. To pursue higher corporate profits, they should engage more in self-centered business-related CSR activities. However, according to the reaction of the market, they should not over-invest in CSR activities.

While the use of textual analysis to evaluate CSR disclosure has recently emerged in the literature, few studies focus on banks in China. Using the term frequency–inverse data frequency (TF-IDF) method, the authors constructed a score for each of the six CSR domains: business (BUS), environment (ENV), human rights (HR), corporate governance (GOV), charity (CHY) and social capital (SCAP). To the best of our knowledge, no studies have adopted the textual approach to evaluate social reporting quality and CSR activities in the context of the banking industry in China.

The paper aims to examine how Indian non-financial service sector companies’ financial performance is influenced by their corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditures. The paper also analyses whether family ownership has a moderating role in the CSR expenditure–financial performance association.

The study includes 288 non-financial service sector companies listed in India with 3,456 firm-year observations. Panel data regression analysis using data for 12 years, starting from 2010 to 2021, is carried out.

The study reveals a positive influence of CSR spending on financial performance measures (Tobin’s Q and return on assets). Mandatory CSR policies also influence the company’s performance. Additionally, family ownership has a positive moderating effect on CSR expenditure–financial performance (Tobin’s Q).

The study gives insights to the managers on how CSR expenditures can be used to maximise their benefits by supporting social causes, particularly in the case of firms with ownership structures where family involvement is there.

The prior studies analysing family ownership effect on the CSR–financial performance relationship are fewer, and in a country like India, where corporate philanthropy is a part of the family business culture, there is a need to understand how CSR spending influences firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether financial resource allocation decisions for corporate social responsibility (CSR) depends on slack resources and free cash flow.

The study's sample consists of 202 company-year observations from 51 financial institutions over the period 2015–2019. The authors collected CSR data from CSR review reports published by the Central Bank (Bangladesh Bank). The financial and governance data are collected from corporate annual reports and year-end review reports published by the Dhaka Stock Exchange. This study uses both the random-effect and generalized estimating equation models to test the hypotheses.

The authors establish two key findings consistent with the predictions of slack resource theory and free cash flow theory. First, the authors find a significant and positive relationship between slack resources and CSR expenditure. This result also supports the traditional thinking about corporate giving – that doing well enables doing good. Second, the author show that increases in free cash flow are associated with increases in CSR expenditure. This indicates the presence of agency problems between managers and shareholders regarding CSR expenditure.

This study is the first to show the positive impacts of slack resources and free cash flow on CSR expenditure in an emerging economy characterized by both capital constraints and high salience of CSR expenditure. The study has important implications for regulators, advocacy groups, shareholders and analysts in emerging economies that share similar contextual characteristics.

This study aims to calculate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure made by companies as per the provisions of Section 135 of Companies Act 2013 and check the status of compliance/non-compliance of these provisions in the mandatory regime of CSR.

Based on a sample of top 500 Indian companies listed on Bombay Stock Exchange, the study compares the CSR expenditure required to be incurred by companies with the actual CSR expenditure made by them over a time span of seven years and calculates the extent of surplus or deficit attained by them starting from the year of inception of CSR provisions, 2014–2015, till the most recent year, 2020–2021.

The findings indicate that the average CSR expenditure made by Indian corporate sector is less than the mandatory requirement. More than half of the companies do not comply with the CSR regulations of the country. Even the “Most Profitable” companies fail to contribute the minimum required amount towards social activities akin to their counterparts in the “Less” and “Least” profitable categories.

The disobedience towards the statutory provisions implies that Indian companies are non-compliant towards CSR guidelines despite the regulative institutional pressure that makes CSR a mandatory practice to legitimise it.

The study contributes to the CSR literature in the light of the transformed regulative institutional environment in India. It includes a comprehensive analysis of compliance of companies with the revised statutes over all the years since the inception of new mandatory guidelines on CSR till the most recent time period on a representative sample, thus, making the findings robust and generic with respect to India.

The research investigates the determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending and CSR disclosures by the Bangladeshi commercial banks. In the process, it explains the relationship between CSR disclosures and CSR expenditure by Bangladeshi commercial banks.

Legitimacy theory has been used to explain the motivation for such expenditure and disclosure. For purpose of analysing the determinants, ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis has been used for the first test with CSR expenditures and ordered PROBIT regression analysis has been used for test with CSR disclosures.

The result found that CSR expenditure depend on banks’ size, age and government ownership, whilst CSR disclosures depend on CSR expenditure, profitability, age, government ownership and Islamic compliance.

The practical contribution of this study includes the assistance for the public policy development by providing better understanding of extent and credibility of CSR reporting by the Bangladeshi banking sector.

The study contributes to the academic literature by presenting preliminary findings from different focus on a developing economy like Bangladesh. The study leads to draw a standard for the developing country to find out the differences compared to developed country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure on the firm’s financial performance in the aftermath of insertion of Section 135 in the Companies Act, 2013 for Indian listed companies.

The paper uses independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, fixed effect panel regression model and principal component analysis on a data set of 153 non-financial companies listed in BSE-500 companies for a period of 2015–2019.

The empirical results of the paper suggest that the mandatory CSR expenditure negatively impacts the company’s profitability.

The study has important implications for regulators and listed companies. Firstly, the mandatory CSR expenditure acts as a burden onto the on-going activities of the firms. CSR activities, therefore, should be integrated with the existing skillsets and expertise of the firms. Secondly, the government can encourage CSR activities by making the expenditure tax deductible. Moreover, the Schedule VII list of activities has a scope to become more inclusive rather than the present exhaustive list.

The paper highlights the gap in the expectation and actualisation of the CSR mandate by studying the recent data of the sample companies of the BSE-500 index. The paper adds to the CSR literature in the emerging market context.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is still at a growing stage in developing economies, so this research aims to examine a novel causal link between CSR (disclosure and expenditure) and competitive advantage (CA), by including competitive intensity (CI) as a moderator.

The panel data of non-financial firms were collected for eight years (2013–2020). This study used distinct proxies of CA, including adjusted firm return on assets and adjusted firm Tobin's q, and a third proxy used to discover the combined validity of the findings. The CSR disclosure was measured by developing an index, while the amount of CSR expenditure was collected from firms' annual reports.

The empirical results of Arellano–Bond estimator showed that CSR disclosure and expenditure have a positive and significant impact on CA. This relationship is also tested with CI as a moderator, the results of moderation showed that CI strengthens the relationship between studied variables.

This research tries to bridge the gap between CSR and CA through CI. It is also an addition to the existing literature by addressing the issue of CA generated from CSR activities. This study also explores the area of CA with three different types of proxies with the moderating effect of CI.

This paper aims to analyse the effect of mandatory corporate social responsibility expenditure (CSRE) on the performance of food and agribusiness firms in India.

This study is based on the firm-level data collected from the Prowess database of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy in the year 2019. The data on key characteristics, business performance and CSRE has been compiled from 362 food and agribusiness firms. The descriptive statistics, t-test for equality of means and Spearman correlation analysis have been undertaken to understand the relationship between mandatory CSRE and firm performance across food and agribusiness sectors.

Out of 362 food and agribusiness firms, 52.2% have reported expenditure in the implementation of social initiatives under their corporate social responsibility. The results show a significant difference in the firm’s characteristics vis-à-vis with and without CSRE. Further, the findings highlight a positive and significant correlation and causal impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on return on sales, return on assets and profit after tax.

The study provides insights for implementing strategic CSR in food and agribusiness firms and gives an adequate justification for incurring CSRE.

This paper increases the understanding of CSR in the food and agribusiness sector. Besides, provisioning mandatory CSR seems to be a beneficial proposition for enhancing a firm’s performance.