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Self-Reporting CSR Activities: When Your Company Harms, Do You Self-Disclose?

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Abstract

Companies increasingly view corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an important dimension of corporate reputation. This is at least partly motivated by the understanding that a strong CSR reputation can enhance profits. This research examines how self-reporting of CSR activities links to corporations’ CSR reputation. Broadly, a company can opt to (a) voluntarily embrace self-reporting and describe its CSR policies and performance to stakeholders or (b) stay silent in this regard. We find a positive link between CSR self-reporting and a company’s social responsibility reputation and, more interestingly, show that companies are more apt to report this information when (a) their activities have a greater adverse environment impact and (b) have policies that are evaluated favorably by a third party. CSR self-reporting mediates the effects of third-party evaluations and improves the CSR reputation of companies. Moreover, consistent with prior research, we show that improvements in CSR reputation enhance profits.

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Notes

  1. For the rest of the paper, for simplicity, we use CSR Policies and CSR Impacts instead of Third-Party Reporting of CSR Policies and Third-Party Reporting of CSR Impacts, respectively.

  2. Newsweek’s full discussion of the variables can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/green-rankings-2010-full-methodology-73879.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Rachel Murdukhayev for providing editing assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Decision Sciences and Marketing, Robert B. Willumstad School of Business, Adelphi University, 1 South Ave, Garden City, NY, 11530-0701, USA

    Zachary Johnson & Yun Jung Lee

  2. Department of Managerial Studies, College of Business, Purdue University Northwest, 2200 169th Street, Hammond, IN, 46323-2094, USA

    Minoo Talebi Ashoori

Authors
  1. Zachary Johnson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zachary Johnson.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Rank

Company

Industry sector

Green score

Envtl. impact

Green policies

Reputation

1

IBM

Technology

100.00

93.96

91.30

96.00

2

Hewlett-Packard

Technology

99.33

58.92

95.56

92.87

3

Johnson & Johnson

Pharmaceuticals

98.51

42.98

100.00

77.58

4

Sony

Consumer products, cars

96.40

56.94

97.26

64.32

5

GlaxoSmithKLine

Pharmaceuticals

94.18

64.95

91.36

73.62

6

Novartis

Pharmaceuticals

91.48

53.97

89.64

67.43

7

Deutsche Telekom

Technology

91.40

95.94

84.04

67.04

8

Panasonic

Consumer products, cars

90.67

44.96

90.63

64.19

9

HSBC Holdings

Banks and insurance

90.18

96.93

78.80

81.72

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Johnson, Z., Ashoori, M.T. & Lee, Y.J. Self-Reporting CSR Activities: When Your Company Harms, Do You Self-Disclose?. Corp Reputation Rev 21, 153–164 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41299-018-0051-x

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