preview

To what Extent is Corporate Social Responsibility Beneficial to a Company’s Performance?

Good Essays

In recent years, there have been a growing number of companies that have an explicit Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plan. As stated by European Commission (2001), CSR is defined as “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis.” It is believed that the motives for CSR are gradually converting from philanthropic rationale to performance-driven orientation, but the question of better company performance resulting from the implementation of CSR has often been the centre of debate. The purpose of this paper is to examine how CSR can positively contribute to company performance, which refers to the quantitative …show more content…

Moreover, David Henderson’s book “Misguided Virtue” (2001) pointed out that companies have to adjust their accounting and management approach to adopt CSR raising costs and reducing revenues. In spite of that, the benefits will be able to outweigh the short-term costs in the long run (Millon, 2011).

On the other hand, CSR is an attractive feature of a company when recruiting employees. Montgomery and Ramus (2007) show that MBAs from leading American and European business schools take aspects of CSR such as environmental substantiality and ethical corporation behavior into consideration when choosing which companies to work for. Over 90 percent of the students interviewed were willing to forgo monetary benefits in order to work for socially responsible corporates (Montgomery & Ramus, 2007). A firm with a reputation for CSR and ethnics also enjoys a competitive advantage in attracting senior managers (Turban & Greening, 1997). The positive effect of CSR on employer attractiveness saves the time and cost to recruit and train new workers.

However, it is observed that the degree of influence of CSR on employees’ commitment depends on the employee’ job position. Herrbach and Mignonac (2004) provide evidence that the impact of CSR initiatives is more significant on workers in marketing or sales department because they are responsible for

Get Access