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Does CSR practice pay off in East Asian firms? A meta-analytic investigation

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Abstract

Academics and practitioners have long wondered whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice is beneficial for Asian firms. To better understand the relationships between CSR and business performance, we use meta-analytical techniques based on 31,773 East Asian firms reported in 28 empirical studies to provide cumulative evidence for the value of CSR. Meta-analytic results indicate a general positive association between CSR and business performance. We find that environmental CSR has a stronger impact than social CSR on business performance, and that CSR practice has a stronger positive effect on operational performance than on financial performance. Further meta-analytic evidence indicates that several moderating issues explain significant variances in the effect size across studies, including economic development stage (developed vs. developing), firm size (SMEs vs. non-SMEs), organizational form (public vs. private), and measurement methods (archival data vs. self-report). Moreover, we find that CSR importance in East Asia has not varied over the past 15 years. We conclude with theoretical contributions and practical implications.

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Notes

  1. For the purpose of this study, East Asia includes China (PRC), North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong (PRC), Macau (PRC), and Taiwan.

  2. The first empirical research included appears in 2001.

  3. Pr (a) is the relative observed agreement among raters; Pr (e) is the hypothetical probability of chance agreement, using the observed data to calculate the probabilities of each observer randomly saying each category.

  4. The number (31,773) refers to the total number of firms across the 28 studies.

  5. Comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA), http://www.meta-analysis.com/.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the supports from Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (2013T60825) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC:71202093; 71572142).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China, 710049

    Mingjun Hou & Zelong Wei

  2. Lingnan College, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, 510275

    Heng Liu

  3. School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, 200083

    Peihua Fan

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  1. Mingjun Hou
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  2. Heng Liu
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  3. Peihua Fan
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  4. Zelong Wei
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peihua Fan.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Studies Included in the Meta-analysis, 2001–2015a
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Hou, M., Liu, H., Fan, P. et al. Does CSR practice pay off in East Asian firms? A meta-analytic investigation. Asia Pac J Manag 33, 195–228 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-015-9431-2

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