Download This PaperFinancial Performance, Pollution Measures and the Propensity to Use Corporate Responsibility Reporting: Implications for Business and Legal Scholarship
17 Pages Posted: 21 Jul 2009 Last revised: 6 Oct 2014
Date Written: September 6, 2009
Abstract
Thousands of companies around the world, including a majority of the Global Fortune 250, voluntarily report on their environmental, societal, and economic impacts, a practice known as corporate responsibility (CR) reporting. The practice is alternatively known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, sustainability reporting, citizenship reporting, or triple bottom line (TBL) reporting.
A brief history of regulation-by-disclosure and CR reporting is presented. The authors then review related business and legal scholarship. Two broad lines of inquiry emerge: first, are CR disclosures associated with businesses that perform well financially, and, second, are CR disclosures associated with businesses that perform well environmentally. The authors test both of these relationships simultaneously using logistic regression. The authors discuss the results of the statistical testing and conclude with suggestions for future lines of research. This article therefore makes a significant contribution to legal and management scholarship by determining the impact that financial and environmental variables have on whether or not a company utilizes CR reporting. The results should provoke further research in the fields of both business and law.
Keywords: Corporate responsiblity reporting, financial performance, pollution, Tobin's Q, Logistic regression
JEL Classification: G3, H87, K32, M14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation