Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Driven to Be Good: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective on the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance

Driven to Be Good: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective on the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance Despite growing evidence of the benefits to a firm of improving corporate social performance (CSP), many firms vary significantly in terms of their CSP activities. This research investigates how the characteristics of the stakeholder landscape influence a firm’s CSP breadth. Using stakeholder theory, we specifically propose that several factors increase the salience and impact of stakeholders’ demands on the firm and that, in response to these factors, a firm’s CSP will have greater breadth. A firm’s CSP breadth is operationalized as the number of different sub-domains of CSR for which a firm has taken positive actions and is captured using a unique dataset from Kinder, Lydenburg, and Domini (KLD). This data set includes positive and negative firm actions across more than 35 different dimensions of socially responsible behavior. Findings based on a longitudinal, multi-industry sample of 447 US firms during the period from 2000 to 2007 demonstrate that firms which: (1) have greater sensitivity to stakeholder needs as a result of the firm’s strategic emphasis on marketing and/or value creation, (2) face greater diversity of stakeholder demands, and (3) encounter a greater degree of scrutiny or risk from stakeholder action have a greater breadth of CSP in response to the stakeholder landscape that they face. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Business Ethics Springer Journals

Driven to Be Good: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective on the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance

Brower, Jacob; Mahajan, Vijay
Journal of Business Ethics , Volume 117 (2) – Oct 19, 2012
Download PDF
19 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/driven-to-be-good-a-stakeholder-theory-perspective-on-the-drivers-of-lLUC7PAIDu

References (113)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Subject
Philosophy; Ethics; Economic Growth; Management/Business for Professionals; Quality of Life Research
ISSN
0167-4544
eISSN
1573-0697
DOI
10.1007/s10551-012-1523-z
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Despite growing evidence of the benefits to a firm of improving corporate social performance (CSP), many firms vary significantly in terms of their CSP activities. This research investigates how the characteristics of the stakeholder landscape influence a firm’s CSP breadth. Using stakeholder theory, we specifically propose that several factors increase the salience and impact of stakeholders’ demands on the firm and that, in response to these factors, a firm’s CSP will have greater breadth. A firm’s CSP breadth is operationalized as the number of different sub-domains of CSR for which a firm has taken positive actions and is captured using a unique dataset from Kinder, Lydenburg, and Domini (KLD). This data set includes positive and negative firm actions across more than 35 different dimensions of socially responsible behavior. Findings based on a longitudinal, multi-industry sample of 447 US firms during the period from 2000 to 2007 demonstrate that firms which: (1) have greater sensitivity to stakeholder needs as a result of the firm’s strategic emphasis on marketing and/or value creation, (2) face greater diversity of stakeholder demands, and (3) encounter a greater degree of scrutiny or risk from stakeholder action have a greater breadth of CSP in response to the stakeholder landscape that they face.

Journal

Journal of Business Ethics – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 19, 2012

There are no references for this article.