In recent years, scholars and managers have devoted greater attention to the strategic implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Consistent with McWilliams and Siegel (2001), we define CSR as situations where the firm goes beyond compliance and engages in ‘actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law’. However, ...

This paper is focused on the identification of influencers that can have an important impact over the decision-making of other users. For this purpose, a popular electronic word-of-mouth community like Ciao.com has been modelled as a social network. Using social network analysis techniques, the existence of influencers is justified by the power law distribution of user participation, and then t...

Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility Society’s demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as an alternative response to market and distributive failures are becoming increasingly prominent. We first draw on recent developments in the “psychology and economics” of prosocial behavior to shed light on this trend, which reflects a complex interplay of genuine altruism, soc...

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not a new concept, but unfortunately has been defined in so many ways, it is often misinterpreted. In fact it has had 40 years to evolve from a somewhat infant concept to a successful managerial tool to build a company’s reputation in the global market arena. Corporate social responsibility has become corporate strategic responsibility — an imperative el...

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the hypothesis that companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to offset corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We find general support for the relationship that when companies do more “harm,” they also do more “good.” The empirical analysis is based on an extensive 15-year panel dataset that covers nearly 3,000 publicl...

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1255 R I. REASONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1257 R II. RISKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1261 R III. MEANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

Much is expected of the modern corporation. Shareholders seeking to maximize their return on investment pay close attention to reported earnings and stock price appreciation. Unanticipated negative movements in these variables can give rise to shareholder agitation, amplified by hedge funds and activist pension funds. Although this is characteristic of the Anglo-American ‘market for corporate c...

The ethics we find in companies contains the same elements as the ethics in the socio-economic context in which they operate. The aspirations and ethical levels of companies operating in certain countries differ substantially from those of companies operating in other areas, where the defence of the environment, social welfare, human rights, cooperation, assistance are expected and offered to a...