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Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures and Investor Judgments in Difficult Times: The Role of Ethical Culture and Assurance

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Abstract

We conduct an experiment with 459 nonprofessional investors to examine whether they evaluate companies differently based on management’s stated purpose for undertaking corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in the presence versus absence of a company-specific negative event. Specifically, we vary whether or not management intends to achieve financial returns from CSR activities in addition to promoting social good. We address investors’ decision processes by investigating whether their judgments are mediated by perceptions of future cash flows and/or the underlying ethical culture of the company. Results show that absent a negative event, investment judgments are stronger when CSR activities are intended to achieve financial returns, through expectations of higher future cash flows. However, when a negative event occurs, we find a moderating effect of independent assurance of CSR disclosures. When disclosures are not assured, investors prefer CSR undertaken only for societal benefit, mediated by perceptions of a stronger ethical culture. However, when disclosures are assured, ethical culture is viewed similarly regardless of management’s intention to achieve financial returns from CSR activities. This suggests that management’s willingness to obtain independent assurance on disclosures is viewed as a positive ethical signal. Thus, assurance complements disclosure of CSR activities by contributing to protection against the impact of negative events.

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Notes

  1. Consistent with Godfrey et al. (2009), we define a negative event as a circumstance having a negative outcome for at least one stakeholder group.

  2. As argued by Godfrey (2005), goodwill from CSR (the mechanism which provides insurance-like protection) will likely not be generated from all activities, but only for positive acts (i.e., those that are other-regarding, not self-serving) made by genuine actors (i.e., managers in a positive ethical culture).

  3. Recent examples include foodborne illness at Chipotle, United Airlines’ forcible removal of a passenger from an oversold flight, and early reactions to Boeing’s 737 MAX airplanes when it was unclear whether natural events or company negligence led to flight crashes.

  4. Other research examines CSR reporting following a negative event (e.g., Pflugrath et al. 2011; McDonnell and King 2013). In that scenario, the company has incentive to “manage” the CSR report in order to mitigate damage from the prior negative event. In contrast, in our scenario, management makes the decision to purchase assurance in advance, voluntarily committing to expend resources to improve information credibility when a negative event has not yet occurred.

  5. In their review, Cohen & Simnett (2015) call for future research to investigate whether CSR assurance is viewed by investors as a frivolous luxury if a company is in an unfavorable financial position, since prior assurance literature mainly examines favorable financial contexts.

  6. Some negative events can be caused by acts of God, industry-wide difficulties, or simply bad luck. We consider scenarios in which a company-specific event has occurred that may either be caused by management’s purposeful actions (i.e., ill-will) or lack of skill. In such cases, investors may look to available information to judge culpability, including nonfinancial information such as CSR disclosures.

  7. Blasco and King (2017) reports that 67 percent of the top 250 companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 ranking for 2016 invest in third-party assurance compared to 46 percent in 2011, while only 45 percent of CSR reporters from the largest 100 companies in 49 countries purchase assurance compared to 38 percent in 2011.

  8. Institutional Review Board approval was received for this study prior to any data collection.

  9. Product failure is an important class of negative events faced by companies. Kim (2014) summarizes literature showing that publicized product-harm crises are frequent and have considerable impact on corporate reputation.

  10. This overall rate is comparable with prior CSR assurance studies (e.g., Brown-Liburd and Zamora 2015; Cheng et al. 2015). Failure rates are 12.3% for the negative event recall question, 12.5% for the CSR assurance recall question. On average, participants took slightly longer than eight minutes to complete the study.

  11. Because H2a and H2b propose moderation of the meditating paths, we discuss quantification of the indirect effects below, when presenting results of testing those hypotheses.

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Acknowledgements

A prior version of this paper was the recipient of the 2018–2019 Glen McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting Ethics from the Steed School of Accounting (University of Oklahoma). This paper is derived from part of Andrew Stuart’s dissertation at Bentley University. Jean C. Bedard (Chair) and Cynthia Clark served on the dissertation committee, along with Wendy Green of the University of New South Wales, to whom we are grateful for her valuable and constructive feedback. We thank Bentley University Ph.D. students and faculty for piloting the experimental instrument. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of the 2018 British Accounting and Finance Association Audit & Assurance Conference, the 2018 International Symposium of Audit Research, the 2018 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, and participants at those meetings. We thank workshop participants at the University of Oklahoma and Suffolk University for their helpful comments. Andrew Stuart acknowledges support provided by a doctoral fellowship sponsored by the Harold S. Geneen Institute of Corporate Governance at Bentley University.

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Appendix: Definitions of Variables

Appendix: Definitions of Variables

Variable name

Description

Independent variables

FIN_INTENT

= 1 if management’s CSR intent is to achieve future financial returns; = 0 if no expectation of future financial returns, holding constant the expectation of societal benefit

CSR_ASSURANCE

= 1 if CSR disclosures are independently assured; 0 otherwise

NEGATIVE_EVENT

= 1 if a company-specific negative event has occurred (a press release describing the company’s product recall due to cases of foodborne illness among customers); 0 otherwise

Dependent variables

VALUATION_1

Initial valuation judgment after receiving background information, but before receiving manipulations (101-point scale, where 0 = low, 50 = average, and 100 = high)

DESIRABILITY_1

Perception of investment desirability after receiving background information, but before receiving manipulations (101-point scale, where 0 = not at all desirable, 50 = average, and 100 = very desirable)

VALUATION_2

Valuation judgment after receiving manipulations (101-point scale, where 0 = low, 50 = average, and 100 = high)

DESIRABILITY_2

Perception of investment desirability after receiving the manipulations (101-point scale, where 0 = not at all desirable, 50 = average, and 100 = very desirable)

ΔVALUATION

= (VALUATION_2 - VALUATION_1)

ΔDESIRABILITY

= (DESIRABILITY_2 - DESIRABILITY_1)

ΔINVESTMENT_JUDGMENT

A single factor (eigenvalue = 1.385) derived from factor analysis of ΔVALUATION and ΔDESIRABILITY

Mediator variables

FCF_CONNECTION

Perceptions of the connection between the company’s CSR activities and future financial performance (11-point scale, where 1 = highly unlikely, and 11 = highly likely)

ETHICS

Perceptions of the connection between the company’s CSR activities and the ethical culture of the company (11-point scale, where 1 = definitely does not provide a signal, to 11 = definitely does provide a signal)

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Stuart, A.C., Bedard, J.C. & Clark, C.E. Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures and Investor Judgments in Difficult Times: The Role of Ethical Culture and Assurance. J Bus Ethics 171, 565–582 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04454-z

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