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Whither Social Initiatives by Business?

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 Misery Loves Companies:
Whither Social Initiatives by Business?

Joshua D. Margolis James P. Walsh

Harvard University University of Michigan
jmargolis@hbs.edu jpwalsh@umich.edu
617-495-6444 734-936-2768

June 22, 2001

We want to thank Paul Adler, Howard Aldrich, Alan Andreasen, Jim Austin, Charles Behling,
Mary Gentile, Stu Hart, Nien-he Hsieh, Nitin Nohria, Lynn Paine, Gail Pesyna, Rob Phillips,
Lance Sandelands, Debora Spar and Joe White for their comments on earlier versions of this
paper. The Aspen Institute’s Initiative for Social Innovation through Business, the Harvard
Business School, and the University of Michigan Business School provided invaluable support
for this project.
 Misery Loves Companies:
Whither Social Initiatives by Business?

ABSTRACT

Corporations have responded to society’s plea to provide innovative solutions to deep-seated

problems of human misery. Organization and management scholarship can play an important role in

understanding and guiding this corporate action. To date, this challenge has largely been ignored.

Instead, the empirical quest to link a firm’s social investments to its financial returns has preoccupied

researchers. Our goal in this paper is to reorient debate and research about social initiatives by business.

We try to stimulate a fresh research agenda in three ways. First, we document the 30-year history of

empirical work on the search for a relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and

corporate financial performance (CFP). Second, we critically appraise the quality of this work. And

third, we question the underlying theoretical and practice-based premises of this research and, in so doing,

introduce a set of new research questions to examine. We believe that these alternative questions offer

great promise for understanding and, ultimately, guiding possible corporate social initiatives. We close

the paper by reflecting upon the role that scholars play, and can play, in guiding the conduct of the

business enterprise.

2
 The world cries out for repair. While some people in the world are well off, many more live in

misery. Ironically, the magnitude of the problem defies easy recognition. With the global population

approaching six billion people, it is difficult to paint a vivid and compelling picture of social life. In the

extreme, Bales (1999) conservatively estimates that there are 27 million slaves in the world today, while

Attaran and Sachs (2001) report that 35 million people are now infected with the HIV virus, 95 percent of

them living in sub-Saharan Africa. Even more broadly, one is left with aggregate statistics that both

inform and numb. Compiled from data released by the World Bank (2000), Table 1 represents the kind of

snapshot that such statistics provide. Living in the United States, we may be shocked to learn that so

many people live on less than $2.00 per day, or that a quarter of the children in Bangladesh and Nigeria

are at work in their nations’ labor force, or that some countries have infant mortality rates more than ten

times our own. Indeed, access to a computer, well enough access to sanitation or a telephone, can be very

limited around the world. The lists go on. People in Delhi and Beijing breathe air that has 415 and 377

micrograms of total suspended particulates per cubic meter, yet the World Health Organization

establishes 90 as a maximum safe level (Berlin’s level is 50). Over 25,000 square kilometers of land were

deforested in Brazil each year from 1990 to 1995 (on average, 5,886 square kilometers of land were

reforested each year in the United States during this same time period). Thirty percent of all indigenous

mammals in Indonesia are threatened with extinction, while 13% of Japan’s birds are threatened and 24%

of higher plants in the United States are so threatened.1

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Closer to home, the picture may be more vivid and compelling. For twenty years, Americans

have lived through a period of unparalleled prosperity. Ibbotson Associates (2000) tells us that in real

terms, a dollar invested in large company stocks in December 1925 was worth $24.79 by year-end 1979.

Exactly twenty years later, that dollar was worth $303.09. Nevertheless, the fact that the upper echelon of

1
As we equate disease, poverty, a degraded living environment, and the like with misery, we are aware that some
readers may accuse us of holding a self-absorbed and even hegemonic worldview. Who are we to say that people
living in such circumstances are miserable? Indeed, flipping the premise of the question, D’Souza (2000) recently
explored the spurious relationship between manifest prosperity and well being in affluent societies. Without
entering into a debate about what constitutes an absolute level of misery, we are interested in exploring situations
where contrasts such as those between the rich and poor, the healthy and the sick, and the educated and the
uneducated is startling – startling to such an extent that companies are asked to redress such living conditions.

3
society disproportionately reaped these gains is no longer news. Galbraith (1998) and Mishel, Bernstein

and Schmitt (1999) provide a comprehensive picture of wealth inequality in America, while Conley

(1999) clearly points out that many Black Americans have been left out of this economic boom. In real

terms, Americans in the 90th percentile enjoyed a 6.4 percent wage increase from 1979 to 1997, while

those in the 10th through 70th percentiles actually lost 14.9, 8.0, 7.8, 8.6, 5.5, 4.4, and 3.9 percent

respectively. Those in the 80th percentile saw an increase of only .4% in this same time period (Mishel et

al., 1999: 131). Table 1 also provides a comparative portrait of how the top ten percent of the people in

each of these thirteen countries today control so much more of each nation’s wealth than those in the

bottom ten percent. Miringoff and Miringoff (1999) chronicle these same kinds of inequality data but

also provide evidence that child abuse, child poverty, teenage suicide, and violent crime, as well as the

number of people living without health insurance, have all increased in the United States since the 1970s.

These kinds of data serve as a stimulus for outrage and reform (see Danaher (1996), Kapstein (1999),

Sklar (1995) and Wolman & Colamosca (1997) for a domestic consideration of these issues, and then

Greider (1997), Henderson (1996), Korten (1995) and Madeley (1999) for discussions from a global point

of view).

The calls for corporate involvement in redressing broader problems of society come from many

quarters. All three branches of the United States government have addressed the role of the corporation in

promoting social welfare. President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have asked companies to

contribute to a global AIDS fund (New York Times, 2001), while Former President Clinton used his

“bully pulpit” to urge corporations to attend to social problems (New York Times, 1996) and later

advocated that minimum labor standards be a part of international trade agreements (New York Times,

1999). With the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, Congress increased (from 5% to 10%) the allowable

corporate tax deduction for charitable contributions (Mills & Gardner, 1984). And even as a majority of

states were adopting “other constituency statutes,” statutes that allow directors to attend to factors besides

shareholder wealth maximization when fulfilling their fiduciary duty (Orts, 1992), the Delaware Court

endorsed this same idea in 1989 when it allowed Time’s management to reject a lucrative tender offer

from Paramount Communications to pursue other non-shareholder interests (Johnson & Millon, 1990).

4
What might be most intriguing, however, is the activity beyond the halls of government that has focused

on the corporation’s role in society.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have worked tirelessly in recent years to establish

worldwide standards for corporate social accountability. Ranganathan (1998) compiled a list of forty-

seven such initiatives; more recently, Business for Social Responsibility, a national business association,

prepared a document in 2000 that compares and contrasts eight of these standards

(http://www.bsr.org/resourcecenter). Lacking enforcement capability, NGOs nonetheless offer a host of

principles (the Reverend Louis Sullivan’s Global Sullivan Principles), management standards (the

Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability’s AccountAbility 1000), best practice guidelines (the OECD

Principles of Corporate Governance) and reporting initiatives (the CERES’ Global Reporting Initiative),

all designed to foster exemplary social and environmental performance. Alongside NGOs, foundations

are using their money to advance a business-led social change agenda (see, for example, the Aspen

Institute’s Initiative for Social Innovation through Business). Other groups, such as the Prince of Wales

Business Leaders Forum, work in partnership with business, government, and community leaders to

promote business models that emphasize the public good.

Beyond government and NGOs, other parties put their money where their values lie as well.

Activist investors try to pressure firms to be more responsive to social problems. Examples range from

TIAA-CREF’s board diversity initiatives (Carleton, Nelson & Weisbach, 1998), to the Interfaith Center

on Corporate Responsibility’s (ICCR) tactic of taking an equity position in a company to advance their

social change agenda (see http://www.iccr.org),2 to the wide variety of socially screened mutual funds

that offer individuals and institutions an opportunity to invest in firms that meet their social performance

objectives (see http://www.socialinvest.org).

Business academics have examined the relationship between business and society for years.

Founded in 1971, the Social Issues in Management division of the Academy of Management counted 821

members 29 years later. The annual set of essays collected in Research in Corporate Social Performance

5
and Policy has been published since 1984. The fields of marketing and accounting have long been

interested in the relationship between their disciplines and social welfare (see Bloom & Gundlach, 2001

for the current state of thinking in marketing, and Epstein & Birchard, 1999 for contemporary thought in

accounting). Business school students have also organized to consider and advance ideas about how

firms may work to solve social problems. Membership in NetImpact, a student group paralleling the

corporate-led Business for Social Responsibility, has grown from 150 members in 1993 to 5,000

members in 2000. Academic institutions and their leaders are responding to these trends. The School of

Management at the University of Bath in Great Britain offers a Master of Science degree in

“Responsibility and Business Practice,” for example, and after interviewing forty CEOs, the Dean of the

Yale School of Management is now encouraging large organizations to work with governments around

the world to ameliorate social problems (Garten, 2001).

Advocates for broader corporate activity in the social arena have written a number of books to

chronicle corporations’ good deeds (see for example, Makower (1994), Reder (1994), Sagawa & Segal

(2000), Svendsen (1998), Tichy, McGill & St. Clair (1997), and Wheeler & Sillanpaa (1997)). Perhaps

not surprisingly, firms themselves are organizing to share their own best practices in the area of corporate

social responsibility. Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), now counts over 1400 members and

affiliated members. Representing tens of thousands of business interests worldwide, the United States

Chamber of Commerce recently founded the Center for Corporate Citizenship, whose purpose is to

provide an institutional mechanism to assist humanitarian and philanthropic business initiatives around

the world. There appears to be something of a social movement underway, or at least a convergence of

opinion, captured powerfully – and emblematically – by Mary Robinson, the United Nation’s High

Commissioner for Human Rights. Tying together the themes of social misery and intensified appeals to

corporations, Robinson made an historic plea in her keynote address at the 1999 BSR annual meeting.

Acknowledging many of the problems identified in Table 1, including the foreign direct investment trends

that position multinational firms alongside the United Nations as perhaps the only other powerful

2
As just one example, General Electric’s 2001 proxy statement included a shareholder’s proposal, submitted by the
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to amend the company’s code of conduct so it would include the

6
transnational institution on the world’s stage, she urged corporate leaders to commit their firms’ resources

to fight these social ills.

Misery loves companies. The question, though, is whether or not a firm should devote its

resources to combat such problems as malnutrition, infant mortality, illiteracy, pollution, and pernicious

wealth inequality. Calls for corporate help clash with traditional conceptions of a firm’s purpose. It is not

at all clear how firms should respond to these calls to action.

A number of constraints may limit, if not prohibit, a corporation’s response to social ills. Appeals

for corporate involvement quickly implicate a long and contentious debate about the theory and purposes

of the firm. Bradley, Schipani, Sundaram and Walsh (1999) reviewed the two protagonists’ arguments,

arguments between contractarians and communitarians. Despite a long history of communitarian protest

(Morrissey, 1989) and the manifest limitations of the contractarian model (e.g., third party externalities

and contracting voids at the intersection of sovereign boundaries), the contractarian perspective prevails.

Communitarians write eloquently about the problems and limitations of the contractarian model, but they

have not yet offered a positive logic to organize a society’s economic production. The dominant

contractarian perspective sees the firm as a nexus of contracts in which managers’ preeminent

responsibility is to maximize the firm’s value. While contractarians may be as interested in ameliorating

human misery as anyone else, they see no reason for a corporation to divert its resources to solve

society’s problems directly. Milton Friedman’s (1970) well-known critique of the social responsibility

movement captures the essence of the contractarian argument. Corporations can contribute best to society

if they do what they do best: provide high quality goods and services to the marketplace and, in so doing,

fulfill people’s needs and create wealth. Socially responsible initiatives may be seen as an undisciplined

double tax on a firm, a tax that leaves managers unfocused and investors frightened.

The challenge facing advocates of corporate social initiatives is to find a way to promote social

justice in a world where the shareholder wealth maximization paradigm reigns supreme. Advocates for

corporate social initiatives must be prepared to argue with a Nobel laureate in economics that such social

initiatives do indeed benefit shareholders. This daunting task has attracted a large number of business

International Labor Organization’s core labor standards.

7
researchers over the years. Their hope is that business scholarship will play a central role in sorting out

the relationship between shareholders, with their economic interests, and society, with its interest in

broader well being and human development. The reformers’ challenge has been to demonstrate that

corporate attention to human misery is perfectly consistent with maximizing wealth: that there is, in the

words of United Nations’ Secretary General Kofi Annan, “a happy convergence between what your

shareholders want and what is best for millions of people the world over” (Annan, 2001). Annan is

responding to the often-heard (and often skeptical) refrain from business leaders to “Show me the

‘business case’ for this kind of social investment activity.” The now 30-year search for a correlation

between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) reflects the

enduring quest to find this persuasive “business case” – to substantiate claims, such as the one made in

Annan’s recent appeal to U.S. corporations, that “by joining the global fight against HIV/AIDS, your

business will see benefits on its bottom line” (Annan, 2001).3

The purpose of this paper is to reorient debate and research surrounding the social initiatives of

business. We argue for a fresh research agenda by undertaking three integrated tasks. First, we document

the 30-year history of empirical work on this CSP–CFP relationship. Second, we critically appraise the

quality of this work. Despite continual efforts to improve research into the connection between social and

financial performance, that research continues largely unaltered.4 In assessing the most comprehensive

set of studies to date, we draw on philosophy to explore the inherent dilemmas that confront those who do

this research (Zald, 1996). Although our critical review may stimulate ideas for improving research into

3
Speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 1, 2001, Annan reasoned that AIDS affects a firm directly by
decreasing the size of its labor market and by limiting the number of consumers that can buy its goods and services.
More indirectly, Annan explained, AIDS increases poverty, and in so doing, it increases wealth inequality, which
then fuels a backlash against globalization that ultimately undermines regional and global security – all of which
provides a very inhospitable climate for business (Annan, 2001).
4
Twelve reviews of this work were published between 1978 and 1999. Taken in historical order: Aldag and Bartol
(1978) reviewed 10 studies; Arlow and Gannon (1982) reviewed 7 studies; Cochran and Wood (1984) reviewed 14
studies; Aupperle, Carroll, and Hatfield (1985) reviewed 10 studies; Ullmann (1985) reviewed 13 studies; Wokutch
and McKinney (1991) reviewed 20 studies; Wood and Jones (1995) reviewed 34 studies; Pava and Krausz (1996)
reviewed 21 studies; Griffin and Mahon (1997) reviewed 51 studies; Preston and O’Bannon (1997) reviewed 8
studies; Richardson, Welker and Hutchinson (1999) reviewed 14 studies; and Roman, Hayibor and Agle (1999)
reviewed 37 studies. Unfortunately, these reviews have done little to alter the course of research in this area.
Researchers continue to investigate this same question (e.g., we count 95 studies as compared to the range of 7 to 51
captured in the current reviews) and continue to weather the same criticisms (e.g., all twelve reviews bemoan the
difficulty of measuring CSP).

8
the link between CSP and CFP, it also challenges the underlying premises of that research. That sets up

our third task: we introduce a set of new research questions that we believe offer greater promise for

understanding social initiatives by business and the role of corporations in civil society.

Research to date has been motivated, at least in part, by the belief that a manifest relationship

between CSP and CFP will persuade firms to invest in social initiatives if the relationship is positive, or

dissuade firms from doing so if the relationship is negative. While the existing body of research can be

used to justify or invalidate corporations’ social investments in financial terms – and thus can be mustered

in debates over the appropriate role of the firm – a fundamental fact is often missed: firms already engage

in social initiatives. We propose a research agenda that takes these initiatives, these investments, as a

starting point, and not as an ultimate policy objective. We suggest a set of questions that focus on how

companies make their social investments and execute their initiatives, examining the effectiveness of

corporate social initiatives – even as debates continue about whether or not a firm should invest in these

initiatives at all. As research into the relationship between CSP and CFP continues, and as theoretical

debate over the legitimate province of the firm continues as well, we seek to open a complementary line

of scholarly work that wrestles empirically and theoretically with the practical reality of the role

companies are being called upon to play in combating social misery. As business conspicuously takes on

a larger role in society, this new research agenda prompts us in the end to consider the role that research

scholars play, and can play, in guiding the conduct of the business enterprise.

An Overview of the Empirical CSP–CFP Literature

Ninety-five empirical studies published between 1972 and 2000 examined the relationship

between companies’ socially responsible conduct and their financial performance (Margolis & Walsh,

2001).5 Bragdon and Marlin published the first study in 1972, with 20 other studies following during the

1970s, 32 in the 1980s, and 42 in the 1990s. In the most recent five-year period from 1996 through 2000,

researchers published 31 new studies. Notwithstanding a long empirical history, interest in this question

seems to be gaining momentum.

5
See Frooman’s (1997) review of corporate social irresponsibility for a look at this extensive companion literature.

9
 Corporate social performance is treated as an independent variable, predicting financial

performance, in 80 of the 95 studies. In these studies, the majority of results (53%) point to a positive

relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance. Corporate social

performance is treated as a dependent variable, predicted by financial performance, in 19 of the 95

studies. In these studies, the majority of results (68%) point to a positive relationship between corporate

financial performance and social performance. Five studies investigate the relationship in both directions,

which explains why there are more results than studies. Table 2 reveals which authors found which

results, including the negative, mixed, and null relationship results.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

A clear signal emerges from these 95 studies. There is a positive association, and certainly very

little evidence of a negative association, between a company’s social performance and its financial

performance. The question about this empirical relationship seems to be answered. Why then does

research into a link between these two constructs persist? Research persists because of ongoing efforts to

attend to the many methodological and theoretical problems that confound this work. Again, grounded in

a philosophical sensibility (Zald, 1996), we examine these problems to determine the likelihood of their

redress, as well as the promise of a new research tack.

A PHILOSOPHY-BASED APPRAISAL

An appreciation for the philosophy of science asks us to take three different approaches to

critique this body of work. Complementary epistemological, ontological, and pragmatic critiques offer a

solid foundation to redouble empirical research efforts, or perhaps to abandon the quest for the answer to

this 30-year old question. The three critiques emerge from a single question. How do we know how

socially responsible a company is? This question challenges sources of knowledge, judgments about a

company’s nature, and the value of any answer that is generated. When scholars determine whether CSP

and CFP are linked, they rely on two significant premises. The first is that we can know how socially

responsible a company is, that we have access to knowledge about the company’s performance. The

second is that, assuming we have that knowledge and that it is valid, we can draw conclusions about the

10
nature of the company, about its social responsibility. The first two philosophical questions assess the

research record by destabilizing these premises. The third question steps back from these premises and

challenges the practical significance of the quest for a link. While disconcerting for the existing line of

inquiry, these deeper philosophical questions inspire a reconsideration of the questions that researchers

might pursue.

An Epistemological Critique: How Do We Know that CSP and CFP are Linked?

Epistemology is the division of philosophy that investigates the nature and origins of knowledge.

It addresses questions of how people come to know what they know. In this case, an epistemological

critique asks us to consider how we know that a company is socially responsible, as well as how we know

that this responsible orientation influences financial performance. Basic features of research

methodology are called into question. As a result, what appears to be a definite link turns out to be far

less stable. Taking stock of the entire body of empirical work, we examine the research samples that have

been examined since 1972, the control variables that have been used to better assess the relationship

between CSP and CFP, and, of course, the ways that CFP and CSP have been empirically measured.

Sampling. More than one half of the extant 95 studies examine exemplary “saints” (N=19),

notorious “sinners” (N=17), or very large companies (N=20). The most common sample of companies

corresponds to the most common measure of social performance, Fortune magazine’s database of

corporate reputations (N=15). This annual survey conducted by Fortune ranks the most admired

American corporations by asking executives, outside directors, and corporate analysts to evaluate the

companies they admire most on eight attributes. Several lists of companies, sorted according to their

social performance, were compiled by Milton Moskowitz, an early editor of the Business and Society

Review, and used by others to examine the CSP–CFP connection (N=4). Researchers have also relied

heavily on the path-breaking work of the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), which compiled and

released reports on the environmental records of companies in heavily polluting industries (N=6). CEP

reports focused on pollution control during the late 1960s and 1970s but later expanded to cover other

dimensions of social performance as well. In addition to CEP’s records, researchers have assembled their

11
own samples of firms in notoriously dirty industries (the “sinners”), such as chemicals, oil, pulp and

paper, steel, and textiles (N=11). Along with saints and sinners, the studies of a CSP–CFP link have

tended to focus on large firms, drawing samples from popular rankings of the largest corporations. The

Fortune 500 (N=11) and Fortune 1250 (N=2), Standard & Poor’s 500 (N=5), Forbes 500s (N=1), and the

Business Week 1000 (N=1) have all been used.

The tendency to rely on prominent companies, whether prominent in size or conduct,

compromises our efforts to establish causal inferences about the CSP–CFP relationship. It does so in two

ways. First, with over ten thousand publicly traded companies in the United States, samples that favor

large companies are not representative. Indeed, as Cottrill (1990) and Fry and Hock (1976) suggested,

firm size and visibility are key determinants of social performance. Firms in notorious industries – such

as heavily polluting ones – or those with obvious public contact are more likely to be pressed for

involvement in social initiatives. Indeed, Seider’s (1974) study of 474 speeches made by top executives

in 11 industries from 1954-1970 found that oil, retail, and automotive executives turned out to be the most

socially responsible in their statements. Fry, Keim and Meiners (1982) also found that charitable

contributions, like advertising expenditures, corresponded to the extent of a company’s public contact.

What about other firms, neither the biggest, the best, nor the worst? If the research aim is to understand,

first, whether social performance and financial performance are connected and, if so, why they are

connected, then it is crucial to acknowledge that the nature of the connection may depend upon

characteristics of the firm. What we know about the positive association between social and financial

performance may be due, in part, to the samples used. More representative samples of all business

enterprises seem vital if we are to be more confident in our knowledge.

There is a second problem posed by favoring certain samples. The majority of the studies of

social performance focus on the environment. In terms of data quality, this is good news. Thanks to

government regulation, valid and reliable data are available about corporate environmental conduct, either

directly from government records, or from such third parties as the CEP and IRRC. Despite the quality

and availability of data, researchers investigating environmental practices may enter a world unto

themselves. There is good reason to argue that environmental practices are not representative of social

12
performance more broadly, especially in how they bear upon financial performance. As Jaffe, Peterson,

Portney and Stavins (1995: 158) noted, “for all but the most heavily regulated industries, the cost of

complying with federal government regulation is a relatively small cost of production.” Exceptions they

name include electric utilities, chemical manufacturers, petroleum refiners, and basic metal manufacturers

– industries that form the focus for many of the CSP–CFP studies. In other industries, “labor cost

differentials, infrastructure inadequacy, and other factors would indeed overwhelm the environmental

effect” (Jaffe et al., 1995: 158). The effect that social performance has upon financial performance in

polluting industries is not necessarily generalizable to other industries, where other costs will outweigh

the effect of CSP costs. Therefore, looking at polluting industries magnifies the impact environmental

performance seems to have upon financial performance. Moreover, looking at environmental

performance as an indicator of broader social performance distorts the inferences that might be drawn.

Regulation is thick and well established in the environmental domain. This regulation intensifies the

bottom-line implications of positive and negative environmental performance. What holds true for the

impact of corporate environmental conduct on financial performance, however, may not hold true for

social performance more broadly. Regulatory intensity is simply not as great in other domains of social

performance. It may be that the salient costs and scarce resources with which corporations must contend

mediate the relationship between social and financial performance. For example, in industries with scarce

talent, or for companies situated in less desirable locations, social initiatives that focus on employees, or

on the communities in which they live, may prove to have a sizable effect on financial performance.

What we know about corporate environmental practices may not be a sound foundation for generalizing

that knowledge to all aspects of CSP.

Controls. This discussion of regulatory intensity and resource scarcity serve as a reminder that

there is more to understanding a firm’s financial performance than its social initiatives (see Capon, Farley

& Hoenig (1990) for a broad review and Schmalensee (1985), Rumelt (1991), McGahan & Porter (1997)

and McGahan (1999) for how this quest has unfolded in the economics and corporate strategy literatures).

Whether researchers are trying to predict financial performance or social performance, the other factors

that may bear on each need to be specified better. While industry (N=41), company size (N=32), and

13
market risk (N=13) are measured in many of the studies, the multiplicity of the controls makes it very

difficult to compare results across studies. In fact, 19 of the 95 studies employed no controls and forty-

seven different controls were investigated in the remaining 76 studies. Without a consistent set of

controls, the accumulated body of knowledge about the CSP–CFP link is not as sound as it first appears.

Timing and Causal Mechanisms. Most studies are silent about the timing of the relationship

between social and financial performance. If indeed social performance does contribute to financial

performance, then when would that impact be revealed? Few studies address this question or its

converse. Aside from the 16 event studies, which are designed to examine the stock market reaction

following a specified event, only 20 of the 79 remaining studies incorporate a time lag in testing the

relationship between social and financial performance. Ambiguity about the timing of the relationship

stems from a larger theoretical issue. Despite ongoing investigation into the link between social and

financial performance, little attention has been devoted to specifying the causal mechanisms that might

account for an observed link. Too much research emphasis has been placed on establishing the presence

of a connection, rather than on unearthing how that connection unfolds. To know whether CSP and CFP

are connected, and if so, in which direction, more work needs to be done specifying the nature of the

causal link: articulating the mechanisms connecting the two, identifying controls, and testing the sequence

of effects.

Financial Performance. To this point, the assumption has been made that measures of the

independent and dependent variables are sound. Unfortunately, that is not so. One might think that

measuring financial performance is a straightforward task, but consider the empirical record. There is no

measurement consensus. Financial performance is measured in 70 different ways in the 95 studies.

Accounting and market measures abound, with some in each category reflecting returns (14 accounting

measures and 7 market measures) and some reflecting risk (11 accounting measures and 3 market

measures). Although the largest number of studies assesses return on equity (N=42) and return on assets

(N=31), or some variant of the two, there is little consensus about how best to assess performance. The

attendant difficulty in comparing and aggregating results frustrates efforts to build a consistent body of

insight.

14
 The choice between employing an accounting rate of return or a stock market return is not

without controversy. The two sets of measures represent different perspectives on how best to evaluate a

firm’s financial performance (Holthausen & Larcker, 1992). Accounting measures capture past

performance and thus indicate how that historical record has been influenced by, or went on to influence,

social performance. In contrast, market measures are forward looking, taken to reflect estimates about the

net present value of expected future earnings. When used in conjunction with research on social

performance, market measures indicate shareholder expectations about the impact socially responsible

practices will have upon future earnings.

Neither measure is right nor wrong; both may be suited to questions about the CSP–CFP link.

But research could be enhanced if the choice of measures were theoretically driven, justified in terms of

whether a particular study deems prospective or historical measures more appropriate. Perhaps most

enlightening is the use of both sets of measures. Ogden and Watson (1999), for example, demonstrated

that costly practices targeted at certain stakeholders do indeed reduce profitability, an accounting

measure, but do not reduce the expectations of future returns, as reflected in market measures. In their

early work investigating pollution control, Spicer (1978) and Chen and Metcalf (1980) used both

accounting and market measures. More recently, McGuire, Sundgren and Schneeweis (1988) and

McGuire, Schneeweis and Branch (1990) also examined both sets of measures. Although using both sets

of measures provides methodological coverage, ultimately, the appropriate measure to use for evaluating

financial performance hinges upon a researcher’s theoretical account for how CSP and CFP are causally

linked. As noted above, such an account is rare.

Social Performance. Problems plague the measurement of a corporation’s social performance as

well: it is operationalized in so many different ways that it is nearly meaningless to aggregate the results.

CSP might be measured by some kind of rating along a set of multidimensional screening criteria, such as

the use of the Kinder Lydenberg Domini (KLD) rating system (Waddock & Graves, 1997; Berman,

Wicks, Kotha & Jones, 1999); a survey of business students (Heinze, 1976) or business faculty members

(Moskowitz, 1972); or a company’s reputation among business executives, as we see in the Fortune

surveys (McGuire, Sundgren & Schneeweis, 1988; McGuire, Schneeweis & Branch, 1990; Herremans,

15
Akathaporn & McInnes, 1993; Preston & O’Bannon, 1997). CSP has also been assessed by noting a

firm’s conduct in South Africa (Meznar, Nigh & Kwok, 1994; Teoh, Welch & Wazzan, 1999), the

presence or absence of women and minority directors (Lerner & Fryxell, 1988), the quality of an

organization’s environmental management record (Russo & Fouts, 1997; Dowell, Hart & Yeung, 2000),

and the magnitude of a company’s philanthropic contributions (Fry, Keim & Meiners, 1982;

Galaskiewicz, 1997). Sometimes the assessments are almost whimsical. One of Sturdivant and Ginter’s

(1977) measures of human rights included a consideration of whether or not employers should be able to

dictate the specific length of their employees’ hair. Again, every one of the twelve reviews of this

literature (see footnote 4) bemoans the difficulty of measuring CSP. This difficulty, we suggest, is

endemic to the two methods of measuring CSP: subjective evaluations and behavioral indicators. Each

measurement method casts doubt upon what in fact can be known about corporations’ actual social

performance.

Subjective Indicators

A commitment to a unified underlying CSP construct, together with the difficulty in pinning that

construct down, leads researchers to rely heavily on subjective indicators of corporate social performance.

Gathering the opinions of informed observers has been a persistent means for measuring social

performance. It preserves the notion that there is a discernible entity, yet it dodges the need to specify

that entity’s content. Early work relied on the surveyed judgments of business school students and people

in business (Alexander & Buchholz, 1978; Belkaoui & Karpik, 1989; Cochran & Wood, 1984; Heinze,

1976; Sturdivant & Ginter, 1977; Vance, 1975) to assess the social performance of corporations.

Scholars’ observations of CSP leaders and laggards (Cochran & Wood, 1984; Moskowitz, 1972; Vance,

1975) also formed the basis of early attempts to investigate the link to financial performance. More

recent work has drawn extensively on the annual Fortune magazine survey of the most admired U.S.

corporations. Appearing in 15 studies, the Fortune rankings are the most commonly used source of data

for measuring social performance. These subjective indicators, though, make it unclear what, in fact, is

being measured. For example, the Fortune rankings of social responsibility reflect a firm’s past financial

performance (Brown & Perry, 1994). Therefore, studies that use the Fortune rankings may be using

16
financial performance, in the guise of social performance, to predict itself.6 Another new reputation

index, one using the Harris-Fombrun reputation quotient, reveals similar bias problems. Recently,

Johnson & Johnson emerged as the top company overall, and number three in social responsibility

(Alsop, 1999). However, the company’s reputation may owe as much to an availability bias (Tversky &

Kahneman, 1974) as it does to its actual performance. Despite Johnson & Johnson’s wide acclaim for its

credo and handling of the 1982 Tylenol poisoning, its record on social performance is subject to far

greater doubt (Badaracco, 1997). By asking evaluators simply to assess a company’s social performance,

subjective indicators are designed to sidestep the difficulty in specifying CSP. However, the basis upon

which evaluators come to their judgments remains unclear.

Even if free of biases and based on specific information about a company’s performance,

observers can draw different conclusions about a corporation’s social performance. In the fall of 1999, as

General Motors was being celebrated at the annual meeting of Business for Social Responsibility,

celebrated in fact by the Environmental Protection Agency and Nature Conservancy for its air-quality

initiatives, the company was simultaneously targeted by activists from the Ozone Action Coalition at the

University of Michigan, who called on the University to divest itself of holdings in GM because of the

company’s stance on the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions (Grass, 1999). In this case, different parties

arrived at different assessments of the same company. Whether it is the perspective of the judge, his or

her inference process, or the underlying information that differs, constructing knowledge about a

company’s social performance is not at all straightforward. It is difficult to know what is being measured

when the variable used to assess CSP is a subjective evaluation proffered by observers, with little clarity

about the standards they are using.

Behavioral Indicators

Aware of the limitations of subjective measurement, others have used behavioral indicators to

measure a firm’s social performance. Next to the Fortune rankings, researchers most frequently turn to

official corporate disclosures to assess a firm’s CSP – both in 10Ks filed with the Securities and

6
The centrality of this measure in the literature prompted Brad Brown (1997, 1998; Brown & Perry, 1995a, 1995b)
to lead an effort to remove the financial halo from the Fortune rankings. This exercise created its own controversy.

17
Exchange Commission (SEC) and in annual reports to shareholders. Fourteen studies examine

disclosures; five of them use the Ernst & Whinney (originally Ernst & Ernst) survey of social

performance disclosures, an annual survey which emerged and disappeared with the push for corporate

social responsibility in the1970s (Business Week, 1972). Of the fourteen, four use disclosure itself as the

sole indicator of CSP, while the other ten measure a variety of items being disclosed, in five instances

also including disclosure itself as an indicator of social performance. In addition to the fourteen studies

using corporate disclosures, another six measure social performance by conducting content analyses of

annual reports. Despite the popularity of these objective sources, there is no way to determine if the

social performance data revealed by corporations are under-reported or over-reported. Verrecchia (1983)

has pointed out that firms may be motivated to both share and conceal information, regardless of whether

the news is good or bad. When it comes to reporting CSP, impression management and disclosure risks

may render behavioral indicators grossly inaccurate.

Information about corporate social performance is open to questions about impression

management (Esrock & Leichty, 1998). Philip Morris spends approximately $75 million per year on

charitable activities but launched a $100 million corporate-image campaign in 1999 to publicize its

charitable actions (Levin, 1999). In a study of institutional investors’ attitudes toward social performance

disclosures, Teoh and Shiu (1990: 75) quote one institutional investor who observed, “Companies that

disclose information of this kind would not necessarily have a particularly good record in social areas.”

Indeed, that is just what Wiseman (1982) found with regard to environmental performance.

Impression management may contaminate data in more subtle ways (Westphal & Zajac, 1998).

Several studies suggest that the disclosure of social performance activities (Blacconiere & Northcut,

1997; Blacconiere & Patten, 1994), and, in particular, certain types of disclosure (Freedman & Stagliano,

1991), mitigate the negative stock market effects that can strike when a disaster occurs or a new

regulation is enacted. This effect is independent of the accuracy of the disclosed information. Therefore,

the supposedly objective information used to assess the link between CSP and CFP may rest on measures

of social performance that may be neither valid nor reliable.

Fryxell and Wang (1994), Simerly (1999) and Szwajkowski and Figlewicz (1997) dispute the need to do so.
18
 The dearth of direct information about a firm’s actual social performance may be even more

troubling than coming to grips with companies’ image burnishing activities. The selective disclosure of

information about corporate philanthropy, for example, inspired one U.S. representative to introduce

legislation mandating that companies report their charitable donations (Gillmor & Bremer, 1999). Legal

scholars have recently called for SEC regulation requiring more extensive disclosure of charitable

activities (Bagley & Page, 1999; Kahn, 1997). Without regulatory coercion, crosscutting motives

confound managers’ decisions to disclose their activities in this domain.

Companies that invest in corporate social performance face two kinds of disclosure risk. If a

firm’s financial performance is strong, critics may complain that the firm is unfairly taxing shareholders

for its CSP initiatives. If a company encounters financial difficulties, its socially responsible practices

may become a lightning rod for protest. Those investments may serve as rhetorical ammunition, if not

prima facie evidence, for arguments that the firm is mismanaged. Boeing faced criticism of this sort

(Gillmor & Bremer, 1999; Jennings & Cantoni, 1998) for reporting a $178 million operating loss in 1997

while simultaneously donating $51.3 million to charity. Levi-Strauss’s languishing financial performance

has been attributed, perhaps as wrongly as its once superior financial performance was, to its social values

(Munk, 1999; Sherman, 1997). Corporate social performance may even give critics an easy rationale to

penalize or fire the CEO. After finding a significant negative relationship between external perceptions of

corporate social performance and executive compensation, Riahi-Belkaoui (1992: 36) concluded,

“executives may be penalized for such activities.” Aside from these concerns about self-preservation and

criticism, some companies may not report their good deeds for fear that publicity corrupts their well-

intentioned motives. LensCrafters, for example, sees efforts to derive acclaim or financial value from

socially responsible practices as hostile to those practices. For a variety of reasons, therefore, executives

may be inclined to keep their social investments very quiet, regardless of what a company is doing and

why it is doing it.

Ironically, the second disclosure risk is sometimes rooted in humanitarian criticism. Those who

generally support extensive corporate social performance can assail a firm’s initiatives as well. The

classic utilitarian question that confounds many sympathetic executives is, “How much is enough?”

19
Advocates may criticize a company for doing too little, especially when the company has been explicit

about its social performance record. Breast Cancer Action, for example, has criticized Avon Products on

a number of fronts for its sponsorship of fund-raising activities and cancer research (Beam, 2000;

Brenner, 2000). Despite their commitment to social performance – or perhaps because of it – leading

socially responsible companies have been harshly criticized for inconsistencies. Ben & Jerry’s with

rainforest nut sourcing and salary inequities (Dreifus, 1994; Shao, 1994), The Body Shop with animal

testing and fair trade (Entine, 1994), and Levi-Strauss with child labor in Bangladesh and slave-like

working conditions in Saipan (Katz & Paine, 1994; Sherman, 1997; Cassel, 2001) have all been

excoriated for their social irresponsibility. No company is perfect, and, indeed, these three companies

used this criticism to spur reforms. However, this kind of criticism can provide sufficient motivation for

even the most socially active corporations to keep the full extent of their deeds quiet.

Conclusion. Getting to know how socially responsible a company is introduces significant

obstacles in the quest to link social and financial performance. It is unclear how to ascertain actual

corporate performance. As challenging, researchers have yet to explain how the connection between CSP

and CFP comes about. Evidence of an association cannot lead to sound conclusions without systematic

controls and models that indicate how and when the two influence one another. But even if researchers

were able to develop a comprehensive assessment of a firm’s social performance, that assessment would

still leave us with equivocal evidence. Building systematic knowledge about companies’ social

performance, though crucial, would still not relieve an equally pressing challenge in determining just how

responsible a company is.

An Ontological Critique: How Socially Responsible is a Company?

Ontology is the division of philosophy that investigates an entity’s nature. It examines questions

about being and existence. The ontological critique suggests that it is difficult to determine just how

responsible, or irresponsible, a company is because the fundamental nature of a company is elusive. As a

result, comparing firms and linking their social performance to financial performance is problematic. A

20
summary judgment of a company’s underlying nature must weigh different sorts of corporate activities,

both positive and negative, in which a company might be involved. Efforts to specify the CSP construct

have not helped to delineate which of these activities are to be counted, nor have they provided a means

for understanding how various activities might be weighed and combined, so as to grasp a company’s true

nature and compare it to that of others.

The Corporate Social Performance Construct. Corporate social performance remains an

amorphous construct. Despite successive efforts to define social performance (Clarkson, 1995; Wood,

1991a, 1991b; Wood & Jones, 1995), Clarkson (1995: 92) noted that there are no definitions “that provide

a framework or model for the systematic collection, organization, and analysis of corporate data.”

Theoretical work has refined the CSP construct, but each phase in its evolution has been accompanied by

yet another source of ambiguity.7 That ambiguity makes it difficult to understand how good, or bad, a

company truly is.

Early definitions focused on corporate social responsibility, leaving its dominion wide open and

unspecified (Wood & Jones, 1995). Empirically, CSP emerged simply as a list of activities. For

example, while Davis (1973:312) defined social responsibility as “the firm’s consideration of, and

response to, issues beyond the narrow economic, technical, and legal requirements of the firm,”

Moskowitz (1975:29) enumerated the following set of criteria for identifying stellar and poor social

performers:

Pollution control, equal employment opportunity, minority and female representation on

the board of directors, support of minority enterprise, responsible and irresponsible
advertising, charitable contributions, community relations, product quality, plant safety,
illegal politicking, disclosure of information, employee benefits, respect for privacy,
support for cultural programs, responsiveness to consumer complaints, fair dealings with
customers.

Theory subsequently developed around corporate social performance (Clarkson, 1995; Wood,

1991a, 1991b; Wood & Jones, 1995). Wood’s (1991a: 693) reigning conception defines corporate social

performance as “a business organization’s configuration of principles of social responsibility, processes

of social responsiveness, and policies, programs, and observable outcomes as they relate to the firm’s

21
societal relationships.” Within this tripartite definition of social performance, Wood specified three

principles of social responsibility, three processes of social responsiveness, and three socially relevant

sets of policies, programs, and outcomes. These comprehensive definitions of corporate social

performance, however, have proven no more tractable than the early vague definitions (Clarkson, 1995).

The range of activities that comprise social performance has expanded. Social performance has come to

encompass, for example, actions driven by economic motives (Carroll, 1979; Wartick & Cochran, 1985)

and initiatives that address problems not only generated by a firm, but also those “related to their business

operations and interests” (Wood, 1991a: 697; Preston & Post, 1975). Virtually any corporate activity

might count as social performance under these definitions.

Systematic conceptualizations of corporate social performance have certainly brought order to the

disparate ideas attached to the construct, but they have not helped identify the boundaries between what

does and does not constitute social performance.8 That makes it especially difficult to distinguish which

aspects of actual corporate conduct should be seen as social performance. To characterize the true nature

of a company, so that the relationship to CFP can be investigated, a method for sorting companies by their

conduct is needed. But which conduct counts as CSP? Judgments about companies’ social performance

can vary based on what is included.

Stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) has entered the breach, introducing concrete points of focus

for researchers. In what might be seen as a third phase of theoretical development, corporate social

performance has been broken into silos. Scholars now operationalize CSP by looking at corporate actions

as they bear upon salient stakeholder groups (Clarkson, 1995; Wood & Jones, 1995). Rather than some

amorphous amalgam of activities, corporate social performance consists of a company’s treatment of

discrete constituencies – shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, the community, and the

7
Several articles trace the history and development of this construct (see Clarkson, 1995; Wood, 1991a, 1991b; and
Wood & Jones, 1995).
8
In her critique of corporate philanthropy, Kahn (1997: 628-629) states, “There is no authoritative definition of
corporate social responsibility, but its central tenet can be described as the belief that businesses, especially large,
public corporations, have an obligation to contribute to the betterment of society in a manner distinct from the
maximization of corporate profit and obedience to the law.” Many will welcome this bright line, clearly
demarcating socially responsible conduct. However, the definition turns on whether those practices are designed to
maximize profit. If not, they are done for the betterment of society and as such, they constitute socially responsible
practices. Of course, by this standard, we would never expect to see a positive association between CSP and CFP.

22
environment. Fortuitously, the most prominent stakeholder categories roughly correspond to the

dimensions along which corporations are evaluated by the KLD index.

As available data and theoretical advances have come closer together, questions about

convergence have come into sharp relief as well. Once a firm’s performance toward a specific

stakeholder group is assessed, what then is to be done? The tendency has been to aggregate across all

stakeholder groups, to come to some unified assessment of a company’s social performance, and to test its

relationship to financial performance. Aggregation is a tricky business, however.9 This in fact is one of

the main motivations for introducing disaggregated analysis of discrete stakeholder groups in the first

place. Stakeholder analysis makes the construct of social performance manageable and measurable. But

by doing so, it also constrains any grand synthesis of the various components, frustrating efforts both to

come to a summary assessment of a firm and thus, in turn, to connect firms’ social performance as a

whole to financial performance.

Corporate Social Performance: Incommensurable Dimensions. The press to disaggregate a

firm’s activities according to the affected stakeholder group is just the first complication in determining

how responsible or irresponsible a company is. In addition to the particular group affected by corporate

social initiatives, corporate activities can be categorized along two dimensions: the origin of the problem

being redressed and the company’s response. Figure 1 captures the typology that classifies firms’

responses to social problems.

INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

The first dimension, origin, divides CSP activities by the source of the social problem. Is the

company itself the source of the problem, as Exxon was with the 11 billion gallon crude oil spill in

Alaska’s waters in 1989? Or is the company responding to Mary Robinson’s plea to redress problems not

of its own making, as Merck has repeatedly been celebrated for doing when it supplied Mectizan to West

Africa to combat river blindness (Useem, 1998)? Here we are drawing a sharper distinction than the one

Wood (1991a) and Preston and Post (1975) draw between a company’s primary and secondary

23
involvement. Primary involvement entails righting corporate wrongs. Secondary involvement refers to

activities where firms “are responsible for helping to solve problems and social issues related to their

business operations and interests” (Wood, 1991a: 697). In contrast, we simply identify whether the firm

has contributed to the problem or not.

The second dimension for characterizing corporate initiatives categorizes how the company

responds to the problem, whatever its source. Companies can ameliorate the problem, ignore it, or exploit

it for gain. Exxon spent over $3 billion to clean up the Valdez spill, attempting to ameliorate the problem

it created. In contrast, General Electric legally dumped PCBs in New York’s Hudson River for years

until this lethal practice was banned more than 25 years ago. To this day, GE resists the tide of protest

that asks the company to clean up the river (Johnson, 2000), ignoring a problem the company helped to

create. An example of exploitation might be Nestlé’s practice in the early 1970s of giving away its infant

formula to impoverished mothers, until they stopped lactating and had no choice but to spend their limited

funds on formula, dilute the formula to make it last longer, or simply watch their babies die of starvation.

Another example of exploitation, the “race to the bottom” phenomenon (Tonelson, 2000), fuels global

protest (The Economist, 1999) and is just now beginning to attract scholarly attention in our field

(Dowell, Hart & Yeung, 2000). Firms did not create the unequal labor markets and regulatory regimes

around the world, but they are surely tempted to exploit these differences for competitive advantage.

Thomson Consumer Electronics, for example, moved its Bloomington, Indiana television assembly

operation (and more than 1000 jobs) to Juarez, Mexico in 1997. Why Mexico? Including benefits,

Thomson’s employees in Indiana earned $19 per hour, while those in Mexico earned a little more than $2

per hour (Werth, 1998).10 We have already noted that Merck’s work to treat river blindness in Africa is

an example of a firm stepping up to respond to Mary Robinson’s plea, ameliorating a problem not of its

9
In a question that reflects a methodological quandary as well as deeper philosophical probing, Wood and Jones
(1995: 239) ask how data about different stakeholders can be pooled so as to respect the relative importance of the
different stakeholders and the degree of their treatment (or mistreatment).
10
While we know that Mexican workers in foreign-owned enterprises benefit from such investment (Aitkin,
Harrison & Lipsey, 1996), there is little evidence of a wholesale substitution of foreign workers for U. S. workers in
multinational firms (Brainer & Riker, 1997; Slaughter, 2000).

24
own making.11 Identifying specific companies that ignore a problem of others’ making seems almost

capricious. A host of companies could fit this profile. T. J. Rodgers, the Cypress Semiconductor CEO,

made news in 1996, however, when he publicly opposed Sister Doris Gormley’s appeal (representing the

ICCR) to place more women and minorities on the company’s board of directors (Rodgers, 1996).

Whether one judges Rodgers to be right or wrong, his action can be characterized as actively ignoring a

social problem that Cypress Semiconductor did not create.

In all, placing a corporate activity in any particular cell may be quite difficult. Judgment is

required both to assess the origin of a problem and the nature of a company’s response to it. Perrow

(1984) clearly showed that attributing cause to complex problems is no simple task. Assessing a response

may be no easier. Maintaining business operations in South Africa under the system of apartheid could

have been seen as corporate exploitation, using apartheid and its attendant low labor costs for profit.

Alternatively, it could have been seen as an ameliorative attempt by firms to provide jobs and economic

leverage to people who were otherwise unjustly caught in a racist grip of poverty and exploitation.

Determining whether a company is sufficiently responsive to problems also requires care. Johnson &

Johnson was thought to be responsive to the Tylenol poisoning scare, but Union Carbide was criticized

for not doing enough to attend to the suffering following the Bhopal tragedy. The line between

ameliorating and ignoring a problem may be finer than imagined.

Even if corporate actions can be placed reliably in different cells, isolating the relationship

between CSP and CFP requires that some way be found to aggregate and compare across cells. But here

the challenge becomes more intense. How socially responsible is the Ford Motor Company, renowned

for its espoused environmental concern and commitment to educational reform, yet slapped with a sexual

harassment suit and the fourth-largest Equal Employment Opportunity settlement in history (Swoboda,

1999)? Complicating matters even more, what is to be made of Ford’s environmental and safety

problems with its sports utility vehicles when it is so quick to acknowledge the problems? Firms engage

in a wide array of activities, some good and some not so good. In addition, safety, natural resources,

11
In accord with Freeman’s (1994) argument against what he deems the “separation thesis” – the thesis that business
pursuits and moral aims are inherently antithetical – companies can ameliorate problems not only through charitable

25
honesty, justice, and education are all to be valued, but in different ways and for different reasons.

Activities in different origin-response cells are incommensurable largely because human values do not

fall neatly along a single continuum that permits measurement along a uniform scale (Anderson, 1993;

Berlin, 1992; Nagel, 1979). Commensurability problems become even knottier when attempting to

compare firms. The set of activities, both good and bad, that count toward one firm’s social performance

will be quite different from another’s. How would Ford fare in a comparison to Cypress Semiconductor

or to Philip Morris, purveyor of alcohol and tobacco, yet a generous supporter of the arts and a noted

provider of emergency relief to victims of natural disasters (http://www.philipmorris.com/pmcares)?

Whether the research aim is to tie social performance to financial performance or, more simply,

to come to terms with the totality of a firm’s societally oriented activities, the firm’s social initiatives need

to be identified, classified, and combined in some fashion. Alert to this challenge, some researchers have

proposed survey-based methods for assigning weights to different activities in the hope that these

assessments can be combined to create an omnibus assessment of a firm’s CSP (Wokutch & Fahey, 1986;

Wokutch & McKinney, 1991; Ruf, Muralidhar & Paul, 1998). Much like the problem with the reputation

rankings, however, this approach begs the validity question. How can judges make sense of all the

nuanced distinctions that we have just raised and come to a valid CSP assessment? What would their

assessment be capturing? These questions lie at the heart of the ontological challenge.

Corporate social performance consists of a set of practices that cannot be aggregated and

compared in a meaningful way. The origin of problems being addressed (or ignored), the extent of

corporations’ responses to them, and the grounds upon which different socially responsible practices are

valued (or not) make any unitary assessment of a company’s social performance illusory. Determining

exactly how responsible a company is – in order to place companies along a uniform scale so as to

compare their financial performance – is elusive. If a company’s activities cannot be aggregated into a

meaningful CSP construct, then CSP may mean nothing at all. Again, though, even if this fundamental

challenge were ignored, we would be left wondering whether summary judgments of corporate social

activities, as Merck did, but also through for-profit provision of goods and services (Prahalad & Hart, 2000).

26
performance, when linked to measures of financial performance, tell us anything worthwhile. That

introduces the third philosophical challenge.

A Pragmatic Critique: What Difference Does a CSP–CFP Link Make?

A third philosophical challenge directly questions the search for a link between social and

financial performance. Suppose that there were reliable and valid ways of knowing a company’s socially

responsible practices, and suppose that the diverse aspects of a company’s social performance could be

synthesized to identify how responsible it really is, so as to compare its true nature to that of other firms.

What would be the practical implication of proving that social performance contributes to financial

performance? This is the question of pragmatic philosophy that William James best articulates:

Grant an idea or belief to be true, it [pragmatism] says, what concrete difference will its
being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What
experiences will be different from those that would obtain if the belief were false? What,
in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms? (James, 1975: 97).

While scholars continue to debate whether social performance contributes to financial

performance, ironically, companies continue to invest in a wide range of social initiatives. Beyond

making the obvious point that researchers could not investigate the CSP–CFP relationship without

evidence of CSP, we should point out that companies’ philanthropic contributions more than quadrupled,

in real terms, between 1950 and 2000 (Caplow, Hicks & Wattenberg, 2001). Of course, BSR would not

be able to count 1400 members and commission a book to document the benefits that accrue from socially

responsible practices (Makower, 1994) were such practices unknown. The reasons executives give for

these investments typically have more to do with an ineffable sense that this work is the right thing to do

(Donnelly, 2001; Galaskiewicz, 1997; Holmes, 1976) than with the anticipated returns that shareholders

will reap from these investments.12 Indeed, business executives make decisions every day without

12
In response to Kofi Annan’s appeal for corporate contributions to a global AIDS fund, Greg Lebedev, the chief
operating officer of the US Chamber of Commerce, noted that humanitarian appeals to corporations, rather than self-
interested ones, might turn out to be most effective (Donnelly, 2001). To the extent that business leaders need a
“business case” to justify their social investments, they may need a compelling social account that lets them trace
how their social investments may ultimately redound to the shareholders’ benefit (Blumstein, Carssow, Hall,
Hawkins, Hoffman, Ishem, Maurer, Spens, Taylor & Zimmerman, 1974; Scott & Lyman, 1968), even if the effect
takes years to reveal itself, if at all. See Weiser & Zadeck (2000) for a summary attempt to come to grips with this
challenge.

27
calculating the net present value of those decisions. Would evidence of an empirical CSP – CFP link, one

way or the other, fundamentally change these investment decisions? We suspect not.

What if this research points to a large and statistically significant negative relationship between

CSP and CFP? Consider Meznar, Nigh and Kwok’s (1994) event study of firms announcing their

divestment from South Africa13 or the event study of TIAA-CREF’s diversity initiative for boards of

directors (Carleton, Nelson & Weisbach, 1998). Both were met with negative market reactions. Does

that mean that firms should have stayed to work with an apartheid government or that attempts to add

African-American directors to boards should be halted? Financial performance may not be the final

arbiter of questions that implicate a range of values and concerns, even when firms are the actors. Tetlock

(2000: 323) may have pinpointed the essential futility of the 30-year research quest to link CSP and CFP:

Disagreements rooted in values should be profoundly resistant to change. . . . Libertarian

conservatives might oppose the (confiscatory) stakeholder model even when confronted by
evidence that concessions in this direction have no adverse effects on profitability to
shareholders. Expropriation is expropriation, no matter how prettified. And some egalitarians
might well endorse the stakeholder model, even if shown compelling evidence that it reduces
profits. Academics who rely on evidence-based appeals to change minds when the disagreements
are rooted in values may be wasting everyone’s time.

The question that needs to be investigated in this value-laden domain – the question that needs to

be examined to determine if CSP makes a concrete difference – is not whether social initiatives make a

difference to shareholders, but rather whether such initiatives make a difference to their intended

beneficiaries. This question has been ignored. What is most wanting is not evidence of a link between

CSP and CFP, but deep insight into how corporate social performance can benefit those to whom it is

directed. Faith in the power of corporate social performance can only be substantiated or discarded by

examining whether and how social performance works.14

13
The decision to divest from South Africa has attracted extensive research attention, generating a wide range of
results. Teoh, Welch & Wazzan (1999) have since conducted the most comprehensive investigation, but a series of
articles were published as the divestment debate was occurring (e.g., Grossman & Sharpe, 1986; Rudd, 1979, 1981;
Wagner, Emkin & Dixon, 1984).
14
Note that the dominant corporate paradigm is a pragmatic belief as well: maximizing shareholder value improves
social welfare (Allen, 1992; Davis & Useem, 2000; Gilson, 1981). People act as though that were true and then
observe the world to determine if the practices enacted indeed improve welfare. The world that results may indeed
be one in which shareholder value is maximized. But is it one in which human welfare is enhanced to the greatest
extent? Even if people believe that maximizing shareholder value enhances human welfare, the belief does not
make it so. What results from acting as though that belief were true must then be evaluated. That is the difference
between pragmatism and religion.

28
 Research that aims to establish a relationship between CSP and CFP distracts attention from

investigating questions that would make a difference. Lost in trying to connect social performance to

financial performance is the logic for pursuing CSP in the first place. Regardless of the controversy

surrounding the intentions that motivate a company’s social investment decisions, intentions deemed

noble by some and misguided by others, information is needed about the consequences – intended and

unintended, good and bad – that these social investments have upon their intended beneficiaries. Our

research bears opportunity costs. Indeed, as a field, we may have committed an “error of the third kind”

(Mitroff, 1974): for thirty years, we have been trying to solve the wrong problem. We need to turn our

research attention to a new set of questions raised now in the final section of the paper.

OUR RESEARCH FUTURE

The relationship between CSP and CFP attracts so much research attention because those who

want to ameliorate human misery see hope in a compelling “business case” that might emerge from a

(preferred) set of empirical results. Proponents of a broader role for the firm in society could then point to

the positive and neutral financial returns associated with social investments as proof that an expanded set

of responsibilities neither jeopardizes the financial role of the firm nor squanders its resources. This

practice-based quest is fueled by an ambition to resolve a longstanding and unresolved theoretical dispute

about the purposes of the firm (see Berle (1931) and Dodd (1932) for the classic outlines of the debate

and then Macintosh (1999) for a look at the contemporary importance of this early debate).

Demonstrating the bottom-line benefits of CSP makes room for humanitarian concerns within the

shareholder wealth-maximization paradigm. If social performance is shown to be consistent with the neo-

classical model of the firm, then both sides can claim victory and proclaim the debate resolved. But firms

already invest in social initiatives, making the search for an action-inducing business case moot. Still, the

search for an empirical rapprochement to the theoretical debate promises future research on this question,

regardless of Tetlock’s (2000) well-placed pessimism.

Before researchers continue to investigate the CSP–CFP link, the epistemological and ontological

questions we identified must be addressed. Although these questions may elude answers, there are

29
practical research steps that would make the philosophical challenges less crippling. First, the

relationship between CSP and CFP needs to be investigated in a random sample of publicly traded firms,

not simply in the largest companies or those in notoriously problematic industries (the study of closely

held firms, albeit difficult, might build upon this effort). Second, extensive descriptive work is needed to

identify concrete examples of corporate social performance; how they are revealed or obscured from the

public; and the mechanisms that lead from these activities to a variety of outcomes. Chronicling and

comparing the behavioral evidence of various CSP investments across a wide variety of data sources (e.g.,

SEC filings, press accounts, web pages, company interviews and beneficiaries’ reports) would move

research closer to reliable and valid measures of social performance. Comparing these indicators of

corporate social performance to the subjective Fortune and KLD ratings would provide some sense of

what in fact is being measured. Indicators of actual corporate conduct must accompany, if not supplant,

impressionistic assessments (Gephart, 1991). Third, when the relationship between CSP and CFP is

reexamined, researchers need to include both accounting and market indicators of CFP.15 Fourth, causal

models need to be developed, which will guide the selection of control variables, posit time lags, and

allow for analysis of the mechanisms that might link social and financial performance. The status of work

on CSP mirrors where scholarship stands in understanding human resource management (HRM)

practices. After years of research, it seems evident that HRM practices bear some relationship to financial

performance (Delery & Doty, 1996; Huselid, 1995), but it is not certain why. A CSP–CFP correlation,

without a documented causal account, will not move a skeptical executive to invest in social initiatives,

let alone resolve a 70-year theoretical debate.

While we can identify ways to improve our understanding of the CSP–CFP relationship, our

ambition for this paper is to do more than move the CSP–CFP research agenda forward. An alternative

set of research questions is equally pressing. These questions are grounded in two research premises that

differ markedly from those anchoring prior research. First, the underlying question motivating research

should no longer be the normative question, “Why should firms invest in corporate social performance?”

15
Event studies may be most revealing. However, unlike studies of corporate social irresponsibility (Frooman,
1997), it has been difficult to collect data on discrete CSP events (Shane & Spicer, 1983 is a notable exception).

30
Rather, research should be oriented toward the empirical question, “How do firms invest in corporate

social performance?” Because companies are already responding to social ills – sometimes those of their

own making, sometimes those with broader origins – it is imperative to understand how companies are,

and are not, responding. What are companies doing in this domain? The second orienting question

expands the focus of research beyond the firm itself to look at society: “Under what conditions should

society call upon firms to invest in social initiatives?” Just because a firm can address social misery does

not mean that it should. Together, these two orienting questions suggest a series of prescriptive questions

about how firms might best devote their resources.16 These prescriptive questions can be asked from both

the firm and society’s perspective. We consider the research agenda that follows from asking these

prescriptive questions, first from the perspective of the firm and then from the perspective of society.

A Focus on Firms

Once the focus shifts to examine the social investments firms do in fact make, unanswered

questions revolve around how best to manage this process. These questions include where firms should

invest, how much they should invest, how they make their investments, and then how they manage and

discipline the process over time. We will consider each in turn.

Where to invest? Whether the decision is to select a supplier, build a manufacturing facility, or

move into a new product market, economic logic typically guides a firm’s decision process. The question

of where firms should target their social performance, though, is more a pragmatic, moral, and political

decision than an economic one. How should a firm decide whom to serve?

Should social initiatives be pragmatically driven, emerging from where the firm can produce

results – tied specifically, perhaps, to the firm’s core competence (Dunfee & Hess, 2000)? No one will

question Merck’s ability to manufacture and distribute Mectizan or UPS’s expertise in advising food-

recovery programs on logistics. The Ford Motor Company, however, developed high school curriculum

The descriptive work we advocate to investigate CSP may be quite helpful in isolating such discrete activities.
16
Here we use the helpful distinction that decision scientists draw between three theoretical categories in their own
work (Bell, Raiffa & Tversky, 1988). Normative theories explain how rational agents should ideally behave.
Descriptive theories indicate how real agents, in fact, do behave. Prescriptive theories provide normative advice
tailored to the realities of human conduct, advising people how to act in light of their limitations.

31
materials. Even if Ford needs a well educated workforce, some might wonder if developing secondary

school curriculum materials falls within its set of distinctive competencies.17

Moral and political considerations might drive a firm’s choice of activities. Mary Robinson

makes a moral appeal to companies. The nature and magnitude of the kinds of problems identified in

Table 1 beg for help, regardless of whether a firm is responsible for their creation or uniquely qualified to

help. Based on moral considerations alone, perhaps a firm should respond first to problems of its own

making and next to society’s most pressing needs. Moral considerations, however, rarely register as the

only considerations. A variety of political pressures may also compel a firm to take action (Galaskiewicz,

1997). Governments may explicitly ask for help, often in exchange for allowing an economic investment

in their countries. Social comparison pressures among the firms’ elite decision-makers may also propel

some investments. Moral and political factors may interact, as they did with Ford Motor Company’s

curriculum initiatives. Recognizing compelling education needs in Michigan, the governor’s office asked

Ford to consider developing what later became known as the Ford Academy. Pragmatic, moral, and

political considerations may all come together in shaping a company’s investment choices. If the firm has

distribution channels to move building materials, food, and medicine to Sub-Saharan Africa, for example,

then moral considerations suggest that they should use them – and government officials may explicitly

ask them to do so.18

Economic logic is not wholly absent from these decisions. The rise of the cause-marketing

phenomenon reveals that firms are quite aware that they can leverage their social investments to build

their brands (Smith & Alcorn, 1991). Brown and Dacin (1997) and Sen and Bhattacharya (2001),

marketing scholars, provide some evidence that consumers will respond to a company’s CSR activities.

Adkins (1999) provides a summary picture of the phenomenon and describes how companies poll

customers to identify particular social passions, which helps firms choose where to make their social

17
Menon and Kahn (2001) provide some experimental evidence suggesting that consumers might react differently to
firms’ CSP activities depending upon whether those activities are congruent with their normal product-market
activities.
18
This is not far removed from Coca-Cola’s decision to introduce AIDS prevention and education programs for its
workers in Africa, where it is the largest employer (New York Times, 2001).

32
investments. Firms might well go further and query their employees, suppliers, host communities, and

other constituent groups about their social investment preferences.

The next research step is to examine empirically just how firms choose their social investment

domains. How do they choose, how do they weigh the opportunity costs of choosing one social

investment over another, and how do they balance these social investments with their other business

investments?19 The catalogue of actual considerations could inform normative debate about where firms

ought to invest (e.g., Holmes, 1976), especially when those considerations are linked to subsequent

assessments of how these investments did or did not benefit the intended recipients. A thorough

understanding is needed of how firms decide where to invest and whether or not these decision criteria are

linked to the ultimate effectiveness of their social initiatives.

How much to invest? Economic logic suggests that firms will invest in positive net present

value projects. Our critique of the CSP–CFP research indicates, though, that in the social domain,

economic returns are quite difficult to estimate. Moreover, economic logic does not necessarily govern

social performance decisions. We suggested that the negative market reactions to divestment from South

Africa (Meznar, Nigh & Kwok, 1994) and to TIAA-CREF’s board diversity initiatives (Carleton, Nelson

& Weisbach, 1998) do not necessarily make these actions imprudent, wasteful, or wrong. The problem is

that alternative guiding principles are not practical either. A utilitarian logic (Smart & Williams, 1973)

creates an insatiable demand on the firm, since there is always one more step the firm could take to

improve the lot of the world. At the limit, such investments will threaten a firm’s viability. The question

of how much to invest bedevils sympathetic decision makers.

How much investment is enough, and how do managers determine what constitutes “enough”? In

one of the early studies in this area, Bowman and Haire (1975) posed this question and found that

companies reporting neither the least nor the most corporate social responsibility activities enjoyed the

highest returns on equity. Is an “intermediate” investment level most beneficial for the recipients of

19
A CEO’s values may come into play here as well. History tells us that those with enormous wealth often held a
sense of noblesse oblige. Lasch (1995: 4) pointed out that “wealth was understood to carry civic obligations.
Libraries, museums, parks, orchestras, universities, hospitals, and other civic amenities stood as so many
monuments to upper-class munificence.” While Lasch bemoaned the demise of noblesse oblige among the new

33
corporate social performance too? Do social investments bring diminishing returns for all concerned?

Determining the proper amount of social performance remains an open question. Once again, descriptive

research will tell us how managers make these decisions and then provide guidance for prescriptive

thinking about how they should make these decisions.

How to invest? Once firms determine what to do and how much to invest, they face three

options for executing their social initiative: make, buy, and hybrid. When firms have a relevant capability

(Dunfee & Hess, 2000), perhaps firms should do it themselves. This would be the “make” option. Intel

offers a variety of math and science education initiatives in the United States and abroad

(http://www.intel.com/education); UPS drew upon its logistics capabilities to develop a technical services

manual for food rescue programs (www.community.ups.com). Charitable contributions, the “buy”

option, may make more sense when a firm lacks any specific capability to address a social need or when

existing institutions have excellent capabilities in the area where the firm seeks to invest. A make/buy

“hybrid” strategy, in the form of a partnership, may be the option of choice when the firm has something

to give and gain from direct involvement (Austin, 2000; Bartel, 2001). This partnership theme oriented

the 1999 BSR meeting: representatives from business and civil society gathered to discuss their

successful and unsuccessful partnership experiences. A much better understanding must be developed of

how firms choose among these different investment modes. It would also be illuminating to determine

when and why a firm would choose to pay for these initiatives from its operating budget or through a

foundation (Gillmor & Bremer, 1999). Research into the investment choices companies actually make

can inform efforts to guide companies’ strategic choices in the social domain.

How to manage the process? Companies face two central management challenges with their

social performance initiatives. Social initiatives need to be managed so they are beneficial to recipients.

At the same time, corporate resources devoted to these programs should be deployed constructively and

efficiently. Just as selection of social performance practices abides by a different logic from the selection

of suppliers, operations, and markets, researchers need to be alert to the distinctive challenges of

moneyed class, elite values clearly orient corporate social investment decisions (Galaskiewicz, 1997). One
implication for research is to examine the impact of CEO succession on a firm’s CSP investment decisions.

34
managing social performance. Empirical research can explore those distinctive challenges, as well as the

management challenges CSP shares with other domains of a firm’s operations. Researchers might start

by identifying the range of CSP management practices used, the factors that bear upon selecting these,

and the relative effectiveness of various practices. Performance measures suited to corporate social

performance would help support corporate efforts. These measures must evaluate the impact upon

recipients and assess the use of resources, before moving to any evaluation of the benefits accruing to the

firm itself. Again, academic research can examine the nuances and challenges of evaluating CSP.

How to discipline the investment process? Evaluation, along with monitoring, is also necessary

to ensure that corporate resources are being used efficiently and effectively in social initiatives. Waste

and abuse certainly need to be curtailed. Akin to concerns about managerial perquisites, logic might

suggest that a firm should direct its contributed resources to their best use, and not just to a CEO’s

favorite project, a friend or family member’s favorite cause, or perhaps even to some compelling societal

need where the firm has no peculiar capability. Although for some, disciplining this activity may be a

simple matter of curtailing the misuse of what is rightfully the property of shareholders in the first place

(Friedman, 1970; Gillmor & Bremer, 1999), there are legitimate governance issues to consider as firms

make, and continue to make, social investments. Governance is comprised of internal and external

corporate control processes (Walsh & Seward, 1990). Little is known about how a firm (including the

board) internally monitors its social investment decisions. Firms will need to find ways to monitor and

maintain the consistency of social initiatives with the underlying pragmatic, moral, and political

considerations that motivate those initiatives. This novel form of discipline will then pose the additional

challenge of being integrated with financial discipline, without being overwhelmed by it.20 Research into

the disciplinary process will reveal the criteria companies use to assess the “best use” of their resources

and the methods applied to ensure that use.

20
Interestingly, if some social investments do bring financial benefit to the firm, then some social investment
decisions may be even more difficult to make tomorrow than they are today. It may well be that some social needs
will never be addressed because the financial analysis does not warrant action. Whitman (1999), for example,
suggests that the current impulse to link corporate philanthropy to the firm’s bottom line will lead many companies
to contribute less to health, welfare and the arts (and more to primary and secondary education). Social justice
advocates who hope to find a persuasive “business case” that will compel firms to act may be quite uncomfortable
with the after-effects that such a business logic might bring to this social domain.

35
 Externally, activist investors use their ownership positions to launch proxy challenges or to

engage in private reform conversations (Carleton et al., 1998), regarding social initiatives among other

reforms, but there is little systematic evidence that speaks to the effectiveness of these external-

monitoring mechanisms.21 Transparency, of course, is always a necessary condition for accountability.

Calls for SEC-regulated disclosure of philanthropic contributions (Bagley & Page, 1999; Gillmor &

Bremer, 1999; Kahn, 1997) may be part of a future solution. The takeover market is an essential

component of external corporate control. We know of no takeover motivated by an attempt to discipline

and improve a company’s social investment strategy. However, takeovers and corporate restructurings of

all kinds pose significant challenges to CSP investment programs. Sustaining corporate social

performance amid changes in organizational form raises an intriguing set of management issues. Be they

mergers and acquisitions or spin-offs and equity carve-outs, corporate restructurings pose unique

management challenges for social performance programs. Without a compelling connection to

shareholder wealth maximization – the orientation that typically prompts such restructurings – social

investments may come under intense scrutiny. Indeed, they may be made a scapegoat for past financial

woes (Freedman & Jaggi, 1982; Mills & Gardner, 1984). Determining how social performance practices

can be preserved amid restructuring, well enough diffused to new divisions of a company during a merger

or acquisition, invites empirical research. Of course, it will be just as interesting to learn how a company

disengages from its social commitments (during a restructuring or, for that matter, any time) or how it

manages to limit its social investments to, say, only one division in a multi-divisional firm. Coming to

understand the governance and control of CSP is a ripe new arena for research.

A Focus on Society

Is society well served by corporate responses to misery? Instead of focusing on the questions of

why and how firms might find it in their interest to engage in socially responsible practices, academic

21
There is some anecdotal evidence that investor actions can precipitate corporate activity in the social domain.
See, for example, http://www.citizensfunds.com/Live/about/approach_activism.asp#March_2000. It has been
shown, however, that activist investors must juggle a host of complex and sometimes competing interests (see
Pozen, 1994).

36
work needs to examine the conditions under which society should or should not call upon firms to engage

in these activities. Under what conditions are firms best situated to respond to social misery, and how are

firms to conduct themselves in such instances to best aid society? What are the benefits, risks, and

consequences, intended and unintended alike, of having firms commit their resources to ameliorating

social ills? Should some boundaries be erected around corporate initiatives? We have lost sight of the

early orientation in the social audit movement to evaluate the firm’s impact on social life from the point

of view of society, and not the firm itself (see Carroll & Beiler (1975) for a discussion of the Krep’s Audit

of 1940). Empirical research can illuminate the conditions under which society is well served by

corporate social initiatives, and which societal needs are best served by those initiatives. In the rush to

encourage corporations to ameliorate social misery, care must be taken to assess the benefits and costs of

involving them in this work. Foundations that fund innovative philanthropic programs generally fail to

explore the effectiveness of those programs (Porter & Kramer, 1999). Researchers in this domain cannot

make this same mistake. Understanding the full range and subtlety of the effects of corporate

involvement in civil society is as important as understanding the circumstances in which corporate social

performance is likely to be the unalloyed good that it is often portrayed to be. Asking when society is

well-served by corporate social initiatives introduces a set of research questions that parallel those posed

from the perspective of corporate managers, directors, and owners. Only now, these questions are posed

from the perspective of citizens and society.

Where to Invest? The question of where to invest again focuses on whether it is best to have

firms address society’s most pressing needs or whether society is made better off when firms address

those social needs that fall squarely within the scope of their distinctive capabilities. These are

prescriptive questions that beg for empirical insight.

Context looms large in the effects that CSP is likely to have. Multinational corporations may be

the most trustworthy entities in some countries (Matthews, 1997; Spar, 1998). Whether a country is in

transition from one economic regime to another or whether a country’s leaders are simply corrupt, the

multinational corporation may be the only “local” institution that people can depend upon. With little or

no local institutional infrastructure, corporations can be called upon to address a range of needs that

37
would otherwise go unmet and hamper basic business operations as well as human development. When

the question is asked, whether corporate social performance is good for society, it is crucial to be clear

about which society is being considered. Even in the United States, qualms about the subtle

consequences of corporate involvement need to be balanced with the bare fact that corporations may be

the only institution poised to respond to certain social problems. Research also needs to be attentive to

the domain – the environment, poverty, education, or health, for example – in which corporate assistance

is sought. A corporate presence may prove to be helpful in one domain and harmful in another.

How Much to Invest? At first blush, we might imagine that from society’s point of view, there

should be no limit to corporate involvement. The scale of human misery is nearly incomprehensible. The

more help, the better. On the other hand, enthusiasm for corporate social performance needs to be

tempered with a degree of caution. Looking only at life inside the corporation, organizational scholars

have warned of the suffocating grip of the corporation when it attempts to insinuate itself into all aspects

of an employee’s life (Kunda, 1992; Rosen, 1985; Wilmott, 1993). In this spirit, Featherstone (1999)

argued that the socially responsible practices of corporations actually threaten the interests of those they

allegedly assist. Sandel (1997: 23) made a similar point about education: “The corporate invasion of the

classroom threatens to turn schools into havens of hucksterism.” Education provides just one vivid

example of the challenges entailed in welcoming corporate investment into the broader public domain.

How can education accommodate a firm’s desire to train future employees and cultivate new consumers

with society’s goal of educating a mindful, self-directed, and independent citizenry? As corporations

move, and are called upon to move, into the broad arena of social performance, researchers need to stay

alert to the perverse effects – perhaps unintentional – that this activity may hold.

Kahn (1997: 635) expressed concern with “the dangers implied by the concentration of not only

the factors of production, but also communal resources in the hands of corporate management.” Welfare

capitalism, for example, clearly serves the interest of the corporation (Jacoby, 1997), so Wood (1991a:

711) justifiably wondered if a firm’s motives affect the outcomes of its social performance. The street

protests against the work of the World Trade Organization (The Economist, 1999) and both the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (The Economist, 2000) suggest that members of society

38
are asking these same kinds of questions as well. Other observers warn that corporate social initiatives

displace government from its appropriate role, all the while creating societal expectations of firms that

they cannot possibly meet (Avishai, 1996; Reich, 1998).22 Corporate social initiatives might not be the

unmitigated good for society that its advocates claim them to be. Just the same, they might not be the evil

and insidious plot to seduce and coopt humanity in service of competitive advantage that some imagine

them to be either. Nevertheless, asking about appropriate investment levels alerts us to the range of

consequences that might follow such corporate social investments. Research can tell us about the myriad

consequences that might attend to varying levels of investment, informing discussion of just how much is

appropriate.

How to Invest? From society’s perspective, the question about the form that a firm’s social

investment may take invokes the same make, buy, and hybrid options. The reasons society might prefer

one option over another, however, may differ from the reasons that corporate leaders might employ. For

example, partnerships with local public schools – a hybrid option – may sustain public involvement,

which society may value in its own right. Such an approach to education might be a surer way to serve

the public’s interest in educating its citizens, rather than simply preparing future employees for a

multinational corporation or cultivating consumers. Privately sponsored schools – the make option – may

attenuate such public involvement but promise a quicker response to the pressing need for educational

reform and experimentation. Researchers need to investigate the effectiveness of the different kinds of

social investment modes, not just for the firm and the problem at hand, but also for society as a whole and

the range of ends its citizens value. Which investment option is an optimal solution to which problem, in

which context? These questions orient an essential research agenda.

How to Manage the Process? How society is to manage the corporation’s investment in social

life opens perhaps the most difficult set of issues to be investigated. From society’s perspective, social

initiatives by business should somehow strike a balance between a democratic process that is accessible

22
No one should mistake corporate involvement in K-12 education for new education policy. Salamon (1999)
reports that in 1995, the US spent $302.4B to educate 50.5M students in its 113,218 elementary and secondary
schools. To place the magnitude of that investment in context, consider the sales revenue of KLD’s most recent top
ten best corporate citizens (including such companies as Proctor and Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Fannie Mae,
Motorola, and IBM). Their combined 1999 sales totaled only $283.3B (http://www.business-ethics.com).

39
and responsive to all, and a corporate process that capitalizes on the efficiencies born of competition. The

ability to exercise voice in the formulation of public policy, in developing and delivering social programs,

and in the opportunity to express one’s ultimate approval or disapproval of these initiatives in the voting

booth are all assumed rights in Western democracies – and no less a set of guiding ideals when

considering public policy initiatives elsewhere. But human misery is laid on the doorstep of companies in

large part to capture their expertise, distinctive capabilities, and managerial problem solving ability –

especially in countries lacking the kind of governing infrastructure that marks developed nations and

Western democracies. How do, and should, companies involve various external constituencies, including

those directly affected by their social initiatives, as they develop and deliver their programs? If a

constituent group is not directly implicated in the efficient delivery of a specific program, how should

their interests and concerns be recognized?

Ironically, whatever dangers corporate social initiatives may pose for public input, corporations

may turn out to be more responsive than the state. The capacity of firms to respond quickly not only to

social problems themselves but also to citizens’ exercise of voice throws into question assumptions about

the proper boundaries between the firm and society. If the firm can take care of a specific social problem

better than the state, or if the firm provides better access and proves to be more responsive to citizens’

input, then perhaps it is a proper institution to develop social policies and practices. But if true, what is to

become of government as we know it?23 Where are boundaries to be drawn?

Corporate social initiatives may be so alluring in part because they remove certain issues and

programs from the inevitably messy process of politics and governing. There may be sound reasons for

doing so, but caution is warranted on two fronts. First, despite the inevitable inefficiencies of politics,

certain issues are intentionally left for the public domain (Friedman, 1970; Sandel, 1996, 1998). Second,

recall that at the turn of the last century, the progressives who professed such faith in technical solutions

to deep-seated societal problems also served their own interests in advancing their faith. As technological

23
We should point out that the KLD index, as well as the socially responsible mutual fund business, exists in large
part because of government regulation and the press for transparency. The threat of government action ensures
corporate efforts to reduce negative social impacts (Kuttner, 1998). It is not at all clear that society can trust firms to
act in its best interests absent some governmental oversight.

40
“experts,” they set themselves up in power as the only ones who could solve these problems (Haber,

1964). We must stay alert to the possibility of similar tendencies in the CSP domain. However noble the

intentions and efficient the initiatives, there is a danger of arrogating power that is rightfully distributed

more broadly.

How to discipline the process? Society faces four significant challenges in disciplining

corporate social initiatives. The first has already been foreshadowed. How can the political process and

the values it embodies (for example, public debate and participation) be preserved? Second, from a

societal perspective, the resource allocation process demands discipline. How are citizens to determine

and ensure that resources are divided appropriately between corporate activities devoted to the production

of goods and services, and thus contributing to material welfare, and those activities devoted directly to

improving broader social welfare? Markets may discipline the production of goods and services, but they

do not serve as a mechanism for channeling resources between these two domains. Third, within the

domain of social initiatives, how can the allocation process be disciplined so that resources are devoted to

the range of significant social problems and not just to the investing firms’ idiosyncratic interests?

Society’s interests may conflict quite directly with firms’ interests and capabilities. Fourth, in what ways

can society guard against the unintended consequences of corporate involvement in the social domain?

Examples might range from the unforeseen side effects of specific corporate initiatives to the broader

social consequences of corporate involvement itself. Will such initiatives impoverish the political sphere

and civil society, co-opting public institutions for private gain, and elevate private executives to de facto

positions of public servants, insulated from public accountability? Alternatively, what happens if state

organizations prohibit firms from making social investments? Who could have foreseen that the decision

by Unicef and the World Health Organization in 1981 to prohibit the distribution of free infant formula

would prove to be a source of intense controversy twenty years later? An estimated 1.1 to 1.7 million

babies died from AIDS after contracting the disease from their mothers’ infected breast milk. Many

activists are now calling upon Nestlé and other infant formula makers to contribute free infant formula in

the Third World. Unicef, however, continues to uphold the ban, prompting much controversy (Freedman

& Stecklow, 2000) and raising complex questions about the relationship between business and society.

41
 Some might argue that these kinds of difficult questions themselves are evidence enough that

firms must stay out of the public domain (Sternberg, 1997). This, though, seems unrealistic. Companies

already occupy significant space in the public domain, and the infant formula case notwithstanding,

citizens and political leaders alike have already asked firms for help, and corporations have already

responded. Careful research and lively academic debate need to focus, not on building a case for or

against corporate involvement, but on the role firms do, can, and should play as they address human

misery, in order to ensure that citizens are left better off as a result.

CONCLUSION

Organization and management scholarship can play an important role in society. As society

appeals to the corporation to provide innovative solutions to its problems, scholarship can play a central

role in understanding and even guiding these investments. This role, though, differs from the one that has

been embraced by the scholars who have investigated these issues to date. After 30 years and 95

empirical studies, the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance

remains equivocal. There may still be reasons to pin down the nature of this relationship, especially the

mechanisms that might link the two. For those interested in these questions, we have identified a host of

reasons why the existing body of work cannot be relied upon for answers. In so doing, we have outlined

steps that will improve future empirical efforts. However, our critique reveals perhaps even more

fundamental – and more fruitful – questions that beg for attention. Ironically, the efforts to support

corporate social performance by seeking evidence of its financial benefits distract attention from research

that might enhance the effectiveness of these initiatives.

To develop an alternative research agenda, we augmented the methodological and theoretical

critiques typical in organizational studies. Our philosophical analysis pushes research about corporate

social performance beyond incremental and path-dependent fixes. Epistemological, ontological, and

pragmatic questions ask us to examine our own questions, and even our good intentions, in ways we

otherwise would have missed. This kind of critique may advance other well-traveled terrain in

organizational research and theory as well.

42
 Human misery and corporate ingenuity should remind us that our central challenge lies in

matching the two. Before rushing off to find the missing link between social and financial performance,

all in hopes of advancing the cause of social performance, researchers need to investigate which corporate

practices best assuage human misery. Ultimately, we need to understand the conditions under which a

corporation’s efforts benefit society. This means questioning corporate social performance down to its

very roots. The many organizational scholars who have investigated the relationship between social and

financial performance have been eager to alleviate human misery. We hope that Sandelands (1990: 254)

is correct when he says, “contact with theory may bring out new ways of practice.” The stakes are very

high. We aspire to develop empirically informed theory that stimulates, if not guides, practice. But the

guidance that scholars propose, and how it is proposed, must be constantly scrutinized. Paradoxically, by

pursuing the new questions introduced in this paper, organizational scholars have the opportunity to

inform practice – and thereby help society – where past advocacy-based research programs have fallen

short. Personal values and commitments certainly orient scholarship. To honor those values and

commitments, however, we must acknowledge and question them. Such appraisals ensure the quality of

our research and the integrity of our commitments.

43
 Table 1
A 1998 Snapshot of Social Life
In The World's Most Populous Nations

Nation Population % Pop. % Share of % Infant % Pop. % Pop. Illiteracy Telephone Personal FDI as a %
in Living on Income/ Children Mortality With with Rate Among Mainlines Computers of Gross
Millions < $2/day Consumption: Aged per 1000 Access to Access to 15-24 year per 1000 per 1000 Domestic
Bottom 10% 10-14 in Live 20 Sanitation olds: People People Investment
vs. Top 10% Labor Births Essential % Male / (1980/1998)
Force Drugs % Female
China 1,238.6 53.7 2.4 / 30.4 9 31 85 21 1/5 70 8.9 0 / 11.9

India 979.7 86.2 3.5 / 33.5 13 70 35 16 22 / 37 22 2.7 .2 / 2.6

USA 270.3 --- 1.8 / 30.5 0 7 --- --- -/- 661 458.6 3.1 / 7.5

Indonesia 203.7 66.1 3.6 / 30.3 9 43 80 51 2/4 27 8.2 1.0 / -2.7

Brazil 165.9 17.4 .9 / 47.6 15 33 40 67 10 / 6 121 30.1 3.5 / 19.3

Russia 146.9 25.1 1.7 / 38.7 0 17 --- --- 0/0 197 40.6 - / 6.1

Pakistan 131.6 84.7 4.1 / 27.6 16 91 65 30 25 / 53 19 3.9 1.4 / 4.6

Japan 126.4 --- 4.8 / 21.7 0 4 100 100 -/- 503 237.2 .1 / .3

Bangladesh 125.6 77.8 3.9 / 28.6 29 73 65 35 40 / 61 3 --- 0 / 3.3

Nigeria 120.8 90.8 1.6 / 40.8 25 76 10 36 12 / 19 4 5.7 -5.4 / 12.7

Mexico 95.8 42.5 1.4 / 42.8 6 30 92 66 3/4 104 47.0 3.6 / 10.7

Germany 82.0 --- 3.3 / 23.7 0 5 100 --- -/- 567 304.7 - / 2.3

Vietnam 76.5 --- 3.6 / 29.9 7 24 85 21 3/3 26 6.4 - / 15.4

44
 Table 2
An Overview of the CSP–CFP Results

Corporate Social Performance as Independent Variable

Positive Positive Zero Negative Mixed

Anderson & Frankle 1980 Moskowitz 1972 Abbott & Monsen 1979 Boyle, Higgins & Rhee 1997 Belkaoui & Karpik 1989
Belkaoui 1976 Nehrt 1996 Alexander & Buchholz 1978 Meznar, Nigh & Kwok 1994 Berman, Wicks, Kotha & Jones 1999
Blacconiere & Northcut 1997 Newgren, Rasher, LaRoe & Szabo 1985 Aupperle, Carroll & Hatfield 1985 Vance 1975 Bowman & Haire 1975
Blacconiere & Patten 1994 Parket & Eilbirt 1975 Bowman 1978 Wright & Ferris 1997 Brown 1997
Bragdon & Marlin 1972 Porter & van der Linde 1995 Chen & Metcalf 1980 Cochran & Wood 1984
Brown 1998 Posnikoff 1997 Fogler & Nutt 1975 Diltz 1995
Christmann 2000 Preston 1978 Fombrun & Shanley 1990 Graves & Waddock 1994
Clarkson 1988 Preston & O'Bannon 1997 Freedman & Jaggi 1982 Guerard (b) 1997
Conine & Madden 1986 Preston & Sapienza 1990 Freedman & Jaggi 1986 Holman, New & Singer 1990
Dowell, Hart & Yeung 2000 Russo & Fouts 1997 Fry & Hock 1976 Kedia & Kuntz 1981
Freedman & Stagliano 1991 Shane & Spicer 1983 Guerard (a) 1997 Marcus & Goodman 1986
Graves & Waddock 2000 Sharma & Vredenburg 1998 Hamilton, Jo & Statman 1993 McGuire, Schneeweis& Branch 1990
Griffin & Mahon 1997 Simerly 1995 Ingram & Frazier 1983 Ogden & Watson 1999
Hart & Ahuja 1996 Spencer & Taylor 1987 Lashgari & Gant 1989 Pava & Krausz 1996
Heinze 1976 Spicer 1978 McWilliams& Siegel 2000 Rockness, Schlachter & Rockness 1986
Herremans, Akathaporn & McInnes 1993 Stevens 1984 O'Neill, Saunders & McCarthy 1989
Ingram 1978 Sturdivant & Ginter 1977 Patten 1990
Judge & Douglas 1998 Tichy, McGill&St. Clair 1997 Teoh, Welch & Wazzan 1999
Klassen & McLaughlin 1996 Verschoor 1998 Waddock, Graves & Gorski 2000
Klassen & Whybark 1999 Waddock & Graves 1997
McGuire, Sundgren&Schneeweis 1988 Wokutch & Spencer 1987

Corporate Social Performance as Dependent Variable

Positive Zero Mixed

Brown & Perry 1994 Buehler & Shetty 1976 Johnson & Greening 1999
Cottrill 1990 Cowen, Ferreri & Parker 1987 Lerner & Fryxell 1988
Fry, Keim & Meiners 1982 Patten 1991 McGuire, Schneeweis & Branch 1990
Galaskiewicz 1997
Levy & Shatto 1980
Maddox & Siegried 1980
Marcus & Goodman 1986
McGuire, Sundgren&Schneeweis 1988
Mills & Gardner 1984
Navarro 1988
Preston & O'Bannon 1997
Roberts 1992
Waddock & Graves 1997

45
 Figure 1
A Typology of Social Initiatives by Business

Corporate Response

Ameliorate Ignore Exploit

Merck’s river Cypress Thomson’s

Others blindness drug Semiconductor’s move from
“Mectizan” response to the Indiana to
ICCR’s diversity Mexico
Source initiative
of the
Problem
Exxon Valdez GE’s PCB Nestlé’s
Firm
oil spill pollution of the infant formula
Hudson River scandal

46
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