美国公司提供的企业社会责任信息披露

1、本科毕业论文 （设计） 外 文 翻 译 外文题目 The Supply of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Among U.S. Firms 外文出处 Journal of Business Ethics 2009 ： （84） P497-527 外文作者 Lori Holder-WebbJeffrey R.CohenLeda Nath David Wood 原文： The Supply of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Among U.S. FirmsIntroduction C

2、orporate social responsibility CSR activity is an area of intense and increasinginterest both on the practice and academic fronts. Investor interest in rms that engagein these activities has grown dramatically. Between 1995 and 2005 investments ofprofessionally managed assets grew from 7 trillion to

3、 24.4 trillion while the shareof these assets invested in socially responsible investments grew from 639 billion to2.29 trillion Social Investment Forum SIF 2006.At the same timelargeinstitutional investors and multistakeholder groups including the UN Principles forResponsible Investment project the

4、 Global Reporting Initiative GRI 2006 and theCERES a coalition of investors and public interest groups -have focused attention onthe materiality of social and environmental information to equity analysis. Themagnitude and growth of socially responsible investing SRI assets has driven anequally drama

5、tic growth in the need for information. The objective ofthis study is todocument the disclosure patterns of CSR by U.S. rms. Investors are not the only interested parties CSR activity provides an increasingfocus of product development and marketing practitioners. Research demonstratesthat certain ty

6、pes of CSR activity produce value for rms in terms of brand loyaltyand marketing advantages Brown and Dacin 1997 Sen and Bhattacharya 2001. AsHandleman and Arnold 1999 p. 36 notein any community it is common to ndretailers donating to local charities sponsoring little league sports teams and proudly

7、displaying the national ag. These actions demonstrate the retailer's adherence tounwritten but powerful normativerules of acceptable social conduct such asbecoming involved with the community and promoting national pride. While the question of what exactly motivates rms to engage in CSR practice

8、s isa matter for ongoing research it is clear from the growth in both SRI assets andcustomer markets for socially responsible goods that there is a need for informationon these practices. The historical emphasis of traditional nancial information doesnot answer the needs of these parties who require

9、 information not only about futureearnings but also aboutthe rm's social and environmental responsibility andintaecrtions with the environment and home communities Adams 2004 Anderson etal. 2005. The concern with non-nancial factors as well as with equity returns resultsin a demand for greater a

10、ccountability from managers. According to the SIF p. 5 now occupying mainstream consciousness -corporate governancetransparency accountability and greater disclosure - have long been central to thepractice of social investing. Most of the work in this area is directed at examining disclosures from E

11、uropeanand Australian rms and nearly all multi-national studies indicate internationaldifferences in disclosure behavior.In North America Cormier and Magnan 1999proposed a cost/benet approach to environmental disclosures. The costs are the coststhat other parties other than shareholders will use the

12、 information and the benets arethe reduction in information asymmetry between managers and shareholders. Cormierand Magnan 1999 tested this on a sample of Canadian rms and found that variablessuch as a rm's reliance on capital marketsand the trading volume for its stock wereassociated with incre

13、ased environmental disclosure. They also conclude thatenvironmental disclosures are increasing over time and that the increased disclosurein Canada could be a function of the less litigious reporting environment found inCanada as opposed to the United States. Alnajjar 2000 examined the 1990socialres

14、ponsibility disclosures of Fortune 500 companies. He found that size andprotability affected the quality and quantity of disclosure. Since there have been anumber of changes in the disclosure environment since 1990 when the data wascollected for the Alnajjar 2000 study and since the Cormier and Magn

15、an 1999looked at Canadian rms it is not clear how U.S. corporations in the 2000s haveresponded to these increased demands for CSR information. Furthermore priorresearch evaluating the content of CSR disclosures has focused primarily on a singlereporting format generally the annual report more recent

16、ly the corporate website.Gray et al. 1995 has suggested that the use of a single format for analysis purposesmay be signicantly limiting the understanding that can be derived about CSRdisclosure behavior. We therefore extend this literature by exploring the entireidentiable body of public disclosure

17、s made by the sample rms during 2004. A majorcontribution of our paper is the development of a means to assess directly theemphasis that management places on disseminating a given type of information priorresearch has largely relied upon frequency of disclosure alone as a proxy for emphasis.In this

18、paper we evaluate the state of reporting of social and environmentalresponsibility often known as corporate socialresponsibility or CSR reportingamong a sample of U.S. rms to determine what types of information are beingprovided and through what means of transmission. We perform a content analysis o

19、nthe disclosures made by a size-and industry-stratied sample of 50 publicly tradedU.S. rms during 2004. Results suggest that companies disclose a wide variety ofCSR information through mandated and voluntary media. Consistent with priorresearch we nd size-and industry-driven differences in disclosur

20、e behavior. Ourresults suggest differences in the pattern and volume of disclosure in U.S. rms whencompared with other studies examining global enterprises. In the next section we review the relevant theory and research and present theresearch questions and hypotheses. Then we describe the research

21、method and discussthe results. We conclude with the implications of the study for reporting activistsaccounting rms regulators and academics who are reconsidering the nature ofcorporate reporting of non-nancial information.Literature review research questions and hypotheses It is difcult from an aca

22、demic and theoretical perspective to disentangle thedifferences between a rm' s decision to engage in CSRactivities and the decision onwhy how and when to report on those activities to stakeholders. The choice of broadtheoreticalright thframework depends on whether the researcher approaches the

23、question ofCSR from an economic or an ethical standpoint Cetindamar and Husoy 2007.Ethical theories indicate that these activities should be promoted because they are the to do.Economic theories indicate that these activities should bepromoted only to the degree that they create shareholder wealth t

24、hrough increasingprot.Virtually all theoretical approaches carry the implication that it is not enough topartake of a CSR action it is necessary then to disseminate information about theaction that has been taken. A matter of signicant difference between the theoriespertains to what actions should b

25、e taken and who should be informed of them. Tosome extent the answer to the rst drives the answer to the second: if the primarygoal of the activity is to enlist the support of a particular party the rm will ofnecessity publicize the activity through channels likely to reach that party. Thereforebefo

26、re launching anexploration of the approaches to disclosure we offer a increase shareholder wealth. An important element of this theory in the CSRcontext is the neo-classical notion that the shareholder is the only stakeholder ofsignicant interest. This study nds that markets are slow to impound the

27、valuationimplications of non-event-type actions into market prices with the exception ofdiversity initiatives. While the authors do not explicitly consider the matter ofinformation dissemination the implication of their approach is that disclosure shouldtake place through the channels to which share

28、holders are accustomed i.e.mandatory lings such as annual reports and 10-Ks. A problematic issue for thetraditional neo-classical approach to CSR is that unlike production decisions CSRactivities and their outcomes may not yield the mathematical tractability necessary forreliable NPV analysis.Market

29、ing strategyAnother stream of inquiry that suggests that CSR may be motivated mainly by wealthconcerns is found in the marketing literature see Robin and Reidenbach 1987 for anextensive survey of this literature. Brown and Dacin 1997 provide empiricalevidence that consumer beliefs aboutbriefoverview

30、 of thewhy''of CSR-calacstsivicitay.lNeoeconomics Bird et al. 2007 adopt a traditional economicapproach to the questionsuggesting that managers should apply net present value NPV analysis to allpotential CSR activities and take only the actions that result in a positive NPV andthusproducts a

31、re inuenced by the information thatthey possess both about corporate ability the producer's competitive advantageoften unrelated to thecompany 's ability to produce. Both items are key elements in creating a goodcorporate reputation posited by numerous theorists to provide a source of econom

32、icbenets to an organization see Brown and Dacin 1997 for a review of this literature.Brown and Dacin 1997 nd that negative CSR perceptions are shown to exertnegative effects on consumer behavior while positive CSR perceptions exert positiveeffects on consumer behavior. They note that even though the

33、re is potentialeconomic value in doing so it can be difcult to communicate corporate positionsbuilt around developing CSR associations: a need potentially answered by CSRdisclosures in the public forum.Handelman and Arnold 1999 provide further evidence on wealth creation throughmarketing activities

34、subsumed under CSR. They suggest that consumers appear topossess a demand for intangible factors indicating congruence with local social normsand values and that the rm's promotioof these elements may yield a strategic angleequal to that of competitive positioning and product attributes. Consist

35、ent with Brown and Dacin 1997 they nd that negative institutionalassociations exert a signicant negative effect on customer perceptions and behaviorand suggest that stakeholdershave aminimal level of institutional actionsbelowweven highly positioned rms begin to experience negative consequences.Hoog

36、hiemstra 2000 suggests that CSR activity is a form of impression managementfor the rm. This image management theory -which encompasses matters ofcorporate identity and corporate image is likewise driven by direct economicconcerns such as customer perceptions and access to capital markets. Themarketi

37、ng-oriented literature on CSR activity suggests these actions are a strategictool to build and maintain customer loyalty and market share. The implications fordisclosure are that the primary targets for information are the existing customers andmembers of the public with a general interest and that

38、the content of the disclosurewill be chosen to emphasize congruence with customer values. Political economy A third theoretical approach considers these actions through the lens of thepolitical economy Campbell et al. 2003 Cormier and Gordon 2001 Deegan2002Deegan and Gordon 1996Dowling and Pfeffer 1

39、975 Gray et al. 1995aGuthrie and Parker 1990 O'Donovan 2002 Maignan and Ralston 2002. In thisapproach the rm is not considered to be an economic entity that can be divorcedfrom its social context it is instead an organic organism that is a party to a socialcontract with the other members of its

40、context. For the rm to survive it must obtainthe support andapproval of its stakeholders whether those be primary stakeholdersthose without whose support the rm cannot function at all including customerssuppliers or providers of labor and capital or secondary stakeholders who areindirectly afliated

41、but in a position to signicantly inuence the rm's successincludingregulators and media Clarkson 1995. CSR activity and the consequentdisclosure is a part of the ongoing communication process required in order to enlistand maintain that support Gray et al. 1995a. Under this general heading resear

42、chershave variously advanced theoretical arguments based on stakeholder theory Clarkson1995Hooghiemstra 2000 Maignan and Ralston 2002 and on legitimation i.e.Campbell 2000Grayet al. 1995a to explain both CSR activities and disclosure. Legitimation pertains to efforts on the part of the rm to establi

43、sh maintain orrepair public perception of its dedication to stakeholder norms and values thusevincing respect for the social contract ''permits it access to capital and labormarkets and other economic resources necessary to ensure organizational survival.Dowling and Pfeffer 1975 outline thre

44、e means to establishing or improvinglegitimacy: adapting operations to conform to existing societal expectations alteringsocial denitions to conform with existing rm operations or engaging incommunication to promoteits public identication with socially legitimate symbolsvalues and institutions. The degree to which the organization is visible and/or relieson social and political support drives the concern for legitimacy and consequentaccess to resources and support Dowling and Pfef