Descriptive, instrumental and strategic approaches to corporate social responsibility: Do they drive the financial performance of companies differently?
Boesso, Giacomo; Kumar, Kamalesh; Michelon, Giovanna
Date: 22 March 2013
Article
Journal
Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal
Publisher
Emerald
Publisher DOI
Abstract
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the descriptive, instrumental, and
strategic approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are related to corporate performance
(CP) and to determine the nature of this relationship, if any. Using data collected by KLD Research
Analytics and Global Reporting Initiative ...
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the descriptive, instrumental, and
strategic approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are related to corporate performance
(CP) and to determine the nature of this relationship, if any. Using data collected by KLD Research
Analytics and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the study examines the association between
companies’ choice of approaches to the CSR and CSR-CP relationship.
FINDINGS: Results of this study indicate that each of the three approaches to CSR—descriptive,
instrumental, and strategic—are associated with CP, but in different ways. While the instrumental
approach to CSR has a positive association with short-term measures of CP, the strategic approach
is associated with short-term and medium-term measures of CP, and the descriptive approach has
no definite association with CP at all.
ORIGINALITY: This study integrates the prevailing justifications for CSR with the taxonomy of
approaches to CSR—instrumental, descriptive and strategic—suggested in the literature. It has been
argued that these frameworks influence managers’ conception of what constitutes effective
stakeholder management and make a difference in how decision makers in an organization think
and act in crafting the company’s social initiatives and in deciding what the company aims to
achieve through these initiatives. By examining the association between companies’ approaches to
CSR and stakeholder management of the CSR-CP relationship, the study offers another perspective
of the ongoing debate in the social accounting literature about the accountability relationships
between business and society.
Finance and Accounting
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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