CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

As You Sow engages companies to build and adopt strong social and environmental policies. Click
on our program areas in the top menu to see our current work and examples the positive, industrywide change our advocacy has affected.

WHAT IS CSR?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to operating a business in a manner that accounts for
the social and environmental impact created by the business. CSR means a commitment to
developing policies that integrate responsible practices into daily business operations, and to
reporting on progress made toward implementing these practices.
Early CSR reports often focused on philanthropy as a driver of CSR. That notion has been
supplanted by a broad commitment to protecting and improving the lives of workers and the
communities in which companies do business. CSR reports now typically address issues impacting
virtually every area of operations: governance and ethics; worker hiring, opportunity and training;
responsible purchasing and supply chain policies, and energy and environmental impact.
Some see this work as charity, philanthropy, or an allocation of resources that could better be
donated by shareowners themselves, writes Debra Dunn, Hewlett Packard Senior Vice President
for Global Citizenship in the companys 2005 global citizen report . But to us, it is a vital
investment in our future, essential to our top-line and bottom-line business success.

SUSTAINABILITY AND CSR

Emphasis on social environmental and economic sustainability has become a focus of many CSR
efforts. Sustainability was originally viewed in terms of preserving the earths resources. In 1987, the
World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future , a
landmark action plan for environmental sustainability. The commission defined sustainability as
meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their needs. Companies are now challenged by stakeholders including customers, employees,
investors and activists to develop a blueprint for how they will sustain economic prosperity while
taking care of their employees and the environment.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTORS AND CSR

If you own shares in a company, you have a voice. Learn how to activate your
power as a shareholder.
Mainstream investors are being challenged to ensure that they review CSR issues when analyzing
companies. The United Nations Environment Program Financial Initiative asked one of the worlds
largest law firms to research whether institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance
companies are legally permitted to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues
into their investment decision-making and ownership practices. The resulting report, released in

October 2005, concluded that investors were not only permitted to but also sometimes required to
take such factors into account.
Integrating environment, social and governance considerations into an investment analysis so as to
more reliably predict financial performance is clearly permissible and is arguably required in all
jurisdictions, the report concluded.
Socially responsible investors have been a key catalyst asking companies to develop a CSR agenda
for the past decade. In recent years, mainstream financial institutions have also come to value CSR.
A January 2005 survey of mainstream investment managers found that 73% predicted that socially
responsible investment indicators will become commonplace in mainstream investing within 10
years. In July 2013, a Spectrem Group survey found, that 49% of Millennial investors with more
than $1 million in net worth reported they used socially responsible criteria to fill out their portfolios.
Such interest waned with age 43% of Generation X millionaires held the same view, followed by
34% of Baby Boomers and 27% of the oldest cohort, which the survey tags as seniors.

GLOBAL REPORTING GUIDELINES

One weakness of CSR and sustainability reports is lack of common measures of performance which
can lead to hyperbole and greenwashing. The Global Reporting Initiative is a multi-stakeholder
process which seeks to refine a set of common, globally applicable CSR/sustainability reporting
guidelines. This process has incorporated the active participation of representatives from business,
accountancy, investment, environmental, human rights, research, and labor organizations from
around the world. More than 700 companies have published CSR or sustainability reports in
accordance with GRI guidelines.
Despite progress made by many companies, adoption of CSR policies and reporting are still in its
early stages at most corporations.

http://www.asyousow.org/about-us/theory-of-change/corporate-social-responsibility/

Corporate social responsibility - What does it mean?

By Mallen Baker: First published 8 Jun 2004
One of the most frequently asked questions at this site - and
probably for all those individuals and organisations dealing with CSR
issues is the obvious - just what does 'Corporate Social
Responsibility' mean anyway? Is it a stalking horse for an anticorporate agenda? Something which, like original sin, you can never
escape? Or what?

Different organisations have framed different definitions - although

there is considerable common ground between them. My own
definition is that CSR is about how companies manage the business
processes to produce an overall positive impact on society.
Take the following illustration:

Companies need to answer to two aspects of their operations. 1. The

quality of their management - both in terms of people and processes
(the inner circle). 2. The nature of, and quantity of their impact on
society in the various areas.

Outside stakeholders are taking an increasing interest in the activity

of the company. Most look to the outer circle - what the company
has actually done, good or bad, in terms of its products and
services, in terms of its impact on the environment and on local
communities, or in how it treats and develops its workforce. Out of
the various stakeholders, it is financial analysts who are
predominantly focused - as well as past financial performance - on
quality of management as an indicator of likely future performance.
Other definitions

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development in its

publicationMaking Good Business Sense by Lord Holme and Richard
Watts, used the following definition.
Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by
business to behave ethically and contribute to economic
development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and
their families as well as of the local community and society at large
The same report gave some evidence of the different perceptions of
what this should mean from a number of different societies across
the world. Definitions as different as CSR is about capacity building
for sustainable livelihoods. It respects cultural differences and finds
the business opportunities in building the skills of employees, the
community and the government from Ghana, through to CSR is
about business giving back to society from the Phillipines.
Traditionally in the United States, CSR has been defined much more
in terms of a philanphropic model. Companies make profits,
unhindered except by fulfilling their duty to pay taxes. Then they
donate a certain share of the profits to charitable causes. It is seen
as tainting the act for the company to receive any benefit from the
giving.
The European model is much more focused on operating the core
business in a socially responsible way, complemented by investment

in communities for solid business case reasons. Personally, I believe

this model is more sustainable because:
1.

Social responsibility becomes an integral part of the wealth

creation process - which if managed properly should enhance the
competitiveness of business and maximise the value of wealth
creation to society.
2.
When times get hard, there is the incentive to practice CSR
more and better - if it is a philanphropic exercise which is
peripheral to the main business, it will always be the first thing to
go when push comes to shove.
But as with any process based on the collective activities of
communities of human beings (as companies are) there is no 'one
size fits all'. In different countries, there will be different priorities,
and values that will shape how business act. And even the
observations above are changing over time. The US has growing
numbers of people looking towards core business issues.
For instance, the CSR definition used by Business for Social
Responsibility is:
Operating a business in a manner that meets or exceeds the ethical,
legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of
business.
On the other hand, the European Commission hedges its bets with
two definitions wrapped into one:
A concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a
better society and a cleaner environment. A concept whereby
companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their
business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders
on a voluntary basis.
When you review each of these, they broadly agree that the
definition now focuses on the impact of how you manage your core
business. Some go further than others in prescribing how far

companies go beyond managing their own impact into the terrain of

acting specifically outside of that focus to make a contribution to the
achievement of broader societal goals. It is a key difference, when
many business leaders feel that their companies are ill equipped to
pursue broaders societal goals, and activists argue that companies
have no democratic legitimacy to take such roles. That particular
debate will continue.
http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/definition.php

Corporate Social
Responsibility for Profit
Comment Now
Follow Comments

Theres an ongoing transformation in the very way companies

define their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.
The messages are different, the goals are different, and, to be
sure, the strategies are different.
Consider two recent studies.
One report by the Havas Media Lab underscores this
transformation with a list based on a survey of 50,000
consumers worldwide who identified the companies they feel
have the most meaningful CSR. The 10 top names
included Unilever and Bimbo, Ikea and Leroy Merlin, as well
as consumer technology companies like Samsung and Sony. As
the Labs director Umair Haque quips, theyre not necessarily
the do-gooding corporate entities you might expect.
In lieu of such do-gooding, Haque talks about CSR as a way
to connect to the personal well-being of customers. Nike+ is a

prime example. Instead of putting up another campaign of

billboards with celebrities saying, Buy our shoesNike+
actually helps makes you a better runner, he says.
In other instances, companies underscore their commitment
by taking substantive risks. Early last year, for example,
Unilever CEO Paul Polman really spoke the language of CSR
as value not just donations when he made an ambitious
sustainability and anti-hunger plan an investment
prerequisite. If you dont buy into this [program], I respect
you as a human being, but dont put your money in our
company, he said.
Its easy for consumers to read this resolve as a personal
message to them: that we as a company are guided by the
same determination to produce beneficial impacts for you
not just the direct beneficiaries of our CSR largesse even at
the cost of a few big shareholders.
Many of the highly ranked CSR programs on the Havas list
predictably feature green initiatives, often, as with Leroy
Merlin, highlighting how the companys own employees
personally volunteer in repair and recycling efforts around the
world. Here too, with this volunteerism, were a long way from
the passive check-writing that defined the old CSR.
The message to consumers is, again, personal. Since these
Leroy Merlin people commit themselves, their own time and
sweat, to these responsibility programs, its no reach to infer
that they do the same when they manufacture the home
improvement products that have a direct impact on our lives.
In another report, Pike Research found that the closer the
companys business is related to consumer electronics, the
higher its CSR score. Companies like IBM, HP, and Texas
Instruments topped the charts fortransparency and

reported results. For starters, their sustainability initiatives

have impressed consumers, the report suggests.
These sector-leading companies have pushed hard to highlight
their greater focus on enhanced sustainable design,
manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-use
management. The message is, our products are socially
responsible across a broad spectrum of consumer needs,
beginning with the benign impact they have on the world in
which theyre used.
In turn, that message rivets consumer attention on the
products themselves and encourages the compelling
supposition that responsibly manufactured products are
simply better products.
In the new CSR lexicon, impact is invoked as the crucial
factor the impact of a phone or a computer on the daily lives
of their users. The key is to build a better mousetrap, not just
provide lavish demonstrations of goodwill. Such an approach
to CSR comes quite naturally to consumer electronics leaders
like Steve Jobs whose ingenuity, more than their philanthropy,
won the hearts and minds of consumers in the first place.
To be sure, the green movement has played a key role for
many industries in the transformation of CSR because its all
about being systemic in approach. Youre expected to not
pollute the river Haque would call that the table stakes
but, beyond that, what impact on the environment do all
your business operations have, including how much water the
plumbing in your corporate office saves on a yearly basis?
Mr. Haques new book, Betterness: Economics for Humans,
provides a useful context in which these varied issues can be
understood as part of the transformation from impersonal
corporate giving to the impact of products and services on

consumers lives and, of course, the profits generated in the

process.
There is ample data to confirm this profit-generating potential.
More than half the consumers surveyed by Havas want to
reward responsible companies by buying their products. 53%
would even pay a 10% premium for those products.
But the benefits dont stop at the check-out line. They extend
to stock value as well, as suggested by Harvard Business
School data confirming that this new species of socially
responsible company gets more favorable ratings from
securities analysts.
The Harvard report specifically underscores the difference
between yesterdays CSR, which was largely based on gratuity,
versus todays model based on impact. The study notes that
the former were often perceived by the markets as valuedestructing while the latter is now seen to be value-creating.
Todays analysts know that high-impact products generate
revenue simply because they work better even as they provide
the tools with which society can improve itself.
It doesnt matter what you sell. People are looking hard at how
you do business and the companies that do it best win the CSR
race, ahead of those for whom corporate giving is the only
index of corporate responsibility.
Follow Richard Levick on Twitter @richardlevick.
Richard S. Levick, Esq., is the president and chief executive
officer of Levick Strategic Communications, a crisis and
public affairs communications firm. Mr. Levick is on the
prestigious list of The 100 Most Influential People in the
Boardroom, He is the co-author of The Communicators:
Leadership in the Age of Crisisand Stop the Presses: The
Crisis & Litigation PR Desk Reference, and writes
for Bulletproofblog. Reach him at rlevick@levick.com.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardlevick/2012/01/11/corporate-socialresponsibility-for-profit/2/

Corporate Social
Responsibility Can Be
Profitable
Rubn Hernndez-Murillo , Christopher J. Martinek
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a doctrine that promotes expanded social
stewardship by businesses and organizations. CSR suggests that corporations embrace
responsibilities toward a broader group of stakeholders (customers, employees and the
community at large) in addition to their customary financial obligations to stockholders.
A few examples of CSR include charitable giving to community programs, commitment
to environmental sustainability projects, and efforts to nurture a diverse and safe
workplace.1
As more attention is being paid by outsiders to the social impact of businesses,
corporations have acknowledged the need for transparency regarding their social
efforts. In a recent survey, 74 percent of the top 100 U.S. companies by revenue
published CSR reports last year, up from 37 percent in 2005. Globally, 80 percent of the
worlds 250 largest companies issued CSR reports last year.2

Is CSR Socially Desirable?

Despite the apparent acceptance of CSR by businesses, many economists have taken a
skeptical view of CSR and its viability in a competitive environment. Milton Friedman, in
particular, doubted that CSR was socially desirable at all. He maintained that the only
social responsibility of a business is to maximize profits (conducting business in open
and free competition without fraud or deception). He argued that the corporate
executive is the agent of the owners of the firm and said that any action by the
executive toward a general social purpose amounts to spending someone elses money,
be it reducing returns to the stockholders, increasing the price to consumers or lowering
the wages of some employees. Friedman pointed out that the stockholders, the
customers or the employees could separately spend their own money on social
activities if they wished to do so.

Friedman, however, also noted that there are many circumstances in which a firms
manager may engage in actions that serve the long-run interest of the firms owners
and that also have indirectly a positive social impact. Examples are: investments in the
community that can improve the quality of potential employees, or contributions to
charitable organizations to take advantage of tax deductions. Such actions are justified
in terms of the firms self-interest, but they happen to generate corporate goodwill as a
byproduct. Furthermore, this goodwill can serve to differentiate a company from its
competitors, providing an opportunity to generate additional economic profits.
Friedmans argument provoked economists to explore the conditions under which CSR
can be economically justified. Economists Bryan Husted and Jos de Jesus Salazar, for
example, recently examined an environment where it is possible for investment in CSR
to be integrated into the operations of a profit-maximizing firm. The authors considered
three types of motivation that firms consider before investing in social activities:

altruistic, where the firms objective is to produce a desired level of CSR with no
regard for maximizing its social profits, i.e., the net private benefits captured by
the firm as a consequence of its involvement in social activities;

egoistic, where the firm is coerced into CSR by outside entities scrutinizing its
social impact; and

strategic, where the firm identifies social activities that consumers, employees or
investors value and integrates those activities into its profit-maximizing
objectives.

In agreement with Friedman, Husted and Salazar conclude that the potential benefits to
both the firm and society are greater in the strategic case: when the firms socially
responsible activities are aligned with the firms self-interest.

Strategic CSR
Similarly, economists Donald Siegel and Donald Vitaliano examined the theory that
firms strategically engage in profit-maximizing CSR. Their analysis highlights the specific
attributes of business and types of CSR activities that make it more likely that socially
responsible actions actually contribute to profit maximization. They conclude that highprofile CSR activities (e.g., voluntary efforts to reduce pollution or to improve working
conditions for employees) are more likely undertaken when such activities can be more
easily integrated into a firms differentiation strategy.
Siegel and Vitaliano studied a large sample of publicly traded firms and classified them
using the North American Industry Classification System codes into five categories. The
five categories were:

search goods, whose quality can be readily evaluated before purchase, e.g.,
clothing, footwear and furniture;

nondurable experience goods, whose quality is experienced over multiple uses

and frequent purchases, e.g., food, health and beauty products;

durable experience goods, which must be consumed before their true value can
be determined, permit less learning from repeated purchases and require a
longer period for the products characteristics to be fully known, e.g.,
automobiles and appliances; and finally

experience services and credence services, which often involve strong

information asymmetries between sellers and buyers, who may find it difficult to
assess the services value even over a long period, e.g., banking, financial
counseling, auto repairs and weight-loss programs.

Siegel and Vitaliano found, using an aggregate measure of CSR involvement, that firms
selling experience goods and experience and credence services are more likely to
engage in CSR than those selling search goods. The difference in the intensity of CSR
involvement across types of goods, they argued, is explained by the consumers
perception of a firms involvement in CSR (even when the firms product does not
directly include a social component) as a valuable signal of the firms reliability and its
commitment to quality and honesty.
Using the same classification of firms as Siegel and Vitaliano did, the accompanying
chart shows the proportion of firms in each classification that demonstrated relative
strength in seven different social issues related to CSR as rated in 2007 by Kinder,
Lyndenberg and Domini (KLD), an independent research firm that rates the social
performance of corporations.4 The chart reveals that the level of relative strength in the
seven individual areas of CSR rated by KLD varies among the five classifications of
firms.5 In other words, firms choose to invest in different types of CSR when catering to
different groups of stakeholders.
A greater proportion of goods-producing firms showed strength in the environment issue
areas. This result is perhaps not surprising. Stakeholders in service firms are not likely to
value CSR efforts related to the environment, since services probably have lower
perceived environmental impact than manufacturing firms do.
In the community issue areawhere strengths include giving programs, volunteer
programs and support for local organizationsfirms providing experience services
performed quite well. Devoting resources to CSR activities in community relations can
bolster reputation, on which firms that are classified in the experience services category
typically rely as a form of brand differentiation. Banks, which constitute a large portion
of the firms in the experience services category, can also excel in this area of CSR by
committing a portion of their commercial loan portfolio to community development
initiatives.
In the human rights issue area, the five categories of businesses have few, if any, firms
that demonstrated relative strength. The only category with a sizeable proportion of
firms was the search goods category. This is also understandable, as firms in this

category face higher pressures from activists concerned about the working conditions of
unskilled labor employed (usually in developing countries) in the production process.

Being Responsible and Profitable

Modern theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that firms can strategically engage
in socially responsible activities to increase private profits. Given that the firms
stakeholders may value the firms social efforts, the firm can obtain additional benefits
from these activities, including: enhancing the firms reputation and the ability to
generate profits by differentiating its product, the ability to attract more highly qualified
personnel or the ability to extract a premium for its products.
Figure 1

Proportion of the 3,000 Largest Publicly Traded U.S. Firms

Demonstrating Strength in Social Issue Areas

SOURCE: KLD STATS 2008

Endnotes
1. See General Mills Inc. for detailed examples of corporate CSR efforts. [back to
text]
2. See KPMG. [back to text]
3. See Friedman (1962, 1970). [back to text]
4. A firm is considered to have a relative strength in an issue area when the fraction
of strengths identified divided by the number of strengths considered exceeds
the fraction of areas of concern identified divided by the number of concerns
considered. [back to text]
5. The ratings in the seven social issue areas are provided by Kinder, Lyndenberg
and Domini (KLD) from the 2008 KLD STATS database. KLD rates the largest
3,000 publicly traded U.S. companies in several categories of strengths and
concerns in each issue area. The classification of firms by product or service
provided used a listing of primary industry (NAICS) codes provided by the Center
for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database. Since some firms received no
ratings from KLD or did not have a primary NAICS code listed in the CRSP
database, the total number of firms considered is slightly fewer than 3,000. [back
to text]

References
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Friedman, Milton. The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits, The
New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970, No. 33, pp. 122-26.
Seewww.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-respbusiness.html.
General Mills Inc. Corporate Social Responsibility Report, 2008.
Seewww.generalmills.com/corporate/commitment/NEW_CSR_2008.pdf
Husted, Bryan W.; and Salazar, Jos de Jesus. Taking Friedman Seriously: Maximizing
Profits and Social Performance. Journal of Management Studies, January 2006, Vol. 43,
No. 1, pp. 75-91.
KPMG, International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting of 2008, October
2008. Seewww.kpmg.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/International-corporateresponsibility-survey-2008.pdf.
Siegel, Donald S.; and Vitaliano, Donald F. An Empirical Analysis of the Strategic Use of
Corporate Social Responsibility. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Fall
2007, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 773-92.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2009/corporatesocial-responsibility-can-be-profitable

Does Corporate Social Responsibility

Increase Profits?
Posted by de-admin May 12, 2011 Printer-friendly

by Ron Robins, Investing for the Soul

It is generally held that corporate social responsibility (CSR) could increase company profits and thus most
large companies are actively engaged in it. But few executives and managers are aware of the research on this
important subject. And as I review here, the research does show that it may improve profits. However, linking
profit growth to abstract variables that are frequently difficult to define is a challenging task.

Most executives believe that CSR can improve profits. They understand that CSR
can promote respect for their company in the marketplace which can result in higher sales, enhance employee
loyalty and attract better personnel to the firm. Also, CSR activities focusing on sustainability issues may lower
costs and improve efficiencies as well. An added advantage for public companies is that aggressive CSR
activities may help them gain a possible listing in the FTSE4Good or Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, or
other similar indices. This may enhance the companys stock price, making executives stock and stock options
more profitable and shareholders happier.
Substantiating some of these beliefs is a study, Corporate citizenship: Profiting from a sustainable
business, by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published in November 2008. Corporate citizenship is
another term roughly equivalent to CSR.
The EIU study said that, corporate citizenship [CC] is becoming increasingly important for the long-term health
of companies even though most struggle to show a return on their investment from socially responsible
activities 74 per cent of respondents to the survey say corporate citizenship can help increase profits at their
company Survey respondents who say effective corporate citizenship can help to improve the bottom line are
also more likely to say their strategy is very important to their business (33 per cent) compared with other
survey respondents (8 per cent).
At the heart of the debate as to whether CSR improves profits is first how you define it. Besides the terms CSR
and CC, another frequently used and related term is corporate social performance (CSP). In the above quoted
EIU study, it provides the following definition of CC: corporate citizenship is defined as transcending
philanthropy and compliance, and is addressing how companies manage their social and environmental

impacts as well as their economic contribution. Corporate citizens are accountable not just to shareholders, but
also to stakeholders such as employees, consumers, suppliers, local communities and society at large.
The study of CSR and its relation to corporate profits is growing. The most recent study on this subject is by
Cristiana Manescu. In her thesis, "Economic Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility and
Responsible Investments, at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law,
Sweden, she wrote on December 6, 2010 that, the results [of her thesis] reveal that CSR activities do not
generally have a negative effect on profitability, but that in the few cases where they have a positive effect, this
effect is rather small. Other studies add further perspectives.
Defining the experience of CSR in relation to different industries is this study, "The Economics and Politics of
Corporate Social Performance" by David P. Baron, Maretno A. Harjoto, and Hoje Jo, published on April 21,
2009. The researchers found that, For consumer industries, greater CSP [corporate social performance] is
associated with better CFP [corporate financial performance], and the opposite is true for industrial industries
Empirical studies have examined the relation between CSR and corporate financial performance, and while the
results are mixed, overall the research has found a positive but weak correlation.
However, reviewing individual empirical studies can be confusing. But by using the technique of metaanalysis, many studies can be statistically analysed to determine collective results. A meta-analysis on CSR
and its link to profits won the famed socially responsible investing, Moskowitz Prize in 2004. The
study, "Corporate Social and Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis," was compiled by researchers Marc
Orlitzky, Frank L. Schmidt and Sara L. Rynes. It yielded encouraging data suggesting a positive link between
CSR and increased profits.
Summing up their results, the researchers said, we conduct[ed] a meta-analysis of 52 studies (which represent
the population of prior quantitative inquiry) yielding a total sample size of 33,878 observations. The metaanalytic findings suggest that corporate virtue in the form of social responsibility and, to a lesser extent,
environmental responsibility, is likely to pay off CSP [corporate social performance] appears to be more
highly correlated with accounting-based measures of CFP [corporate financial performance] than with marketbased indicators, and CSP reputation indices are more highly correlated with CFP than are other indicators of
CSP. This meta-analysis establishes a greater degree of certainty with respect to the CSP-CFP relationship
than is currently assumed to exist by many business scholars.
So the research generally indicates that CSR/CC/CSP, no matter how you define it, does offer potential benefit
to corporate profits. But there is another unanswered problem, and that relates to causation.
Do high profits enable greater spending on CSR, or is it that CSR itself creates higher profits? Referring again
to the study, "The Economics and Politics of Corporate Social Performance," the researchers write that, the
direction of causation remains an open question. That is, good CSP could cause good CFP, but good CFP
could provide slack resources to spend on CSP. As the Economist wrote, ...whether profitable companies feel
rich enough to splash out on CSR, or CSR [activity itself] brings profits. Hopefully, future research will be able
to answer this question.
On balance, surveys and the research literature suggest that what most executives believe intuitively, that CSR
can improve profits, is possible. And almost no large public company today would want to be seen unengaged
in CSR. That is clear admission of how important CSR might be to their bottom line, no matter how difficult it
may be to define CSR and link it to profits.

Ron Robins is Founder and Analyst at the website Investing for the Soul and a financial and economics
columnist for alrroya.com, a leading Middle Eastern business portal/publication.
This article is reprinted with permission. Copyright alrroya.com.

http://business-ethics.com/2011/05/12/does-corporate-social-responsibility-increaseprofits/
https://www.devex.com/news/is-corporate-social-responsibility-profitable-forcompanies-80354
Statements

http://www.albany.edu/honorscollege/files/kan_thesis.pdf
http://f2.washington.edu/fm/sites/default/files/Business%20Case%20for%20CSR
%20Review%20of%20Concepts,%20Research%20and%20Practice.pdf