Corporate social responsibility across industries: When and who can do well by doing good?

Andreas GF Hoepner and Pei-Shan Yu

While much of the literature considers whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) pays, this chapter takes a more nuanced perspective, theoretically and empirically, by investigating when CSR pays and for whom? Theoretically, we develop two contingency perspectives. First, we extend previous work to argue that CSR’s impacts on corporate financial performance (CFP) are moderated by five factors: CSR form; firm characteristics; time; national framework; and industrial characteristics. Focusing on industrial characteristics, we theorise that differences in industries’ dependency on certain stakeholder groups, their proximity to the end-consumer, their potential for social and environmental damages, and their level of product/service differentiation moderate CSR’s value relevance.

Our second contingency perspective considers for whom CSR might pay. While previous research has almost exclusively viewed CSR’s value from a corporate perspective, we argue that stakeholders, government and investor perspectives are also relevant. Empirically, we analyse CSR’s value across 10 industry sectors from a corporate and investor aspect, respectively. We find that CSR has substantial value