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Toward a Conceptual Integration of Corporate Social and Financial Performance

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Handbook of Integrated CSR Communication

Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

Abstract

We describe the potential for an integrative perspective on corporate social performance in two distinct models. The first builds on previous research to demonstrate the theory building possibilities for conceptual integration. By extension, the second model of value attunement shows how an organization can become responsible when the executive strives to embed values in organizational decisions that facilitate the triple bottom line of social, environmental, and economic performance. According to the attunement model, the executive who strives for these goals will necessarily understand the significance of establishing means of communicating value information in the organization and between the organization and its external constituents. We move toward an integration of corporate social and financial performance by summarizing the various competitive benefits that attunement may yield for the socially and environmentally responsible firm.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From here on, the term social performance should be understood to include environmental performance, since expectations of environmental responsibilities come from society in general and organizational stakeholders in particular.

  2. 2.

    Swanson’s (1999) article, in which this prototype was introduced, was selected for the Best Article Award by the International Association of Business in Society in association with the California Management Review in 2001.

  3. 3.

    This meta-analysis won the 2004 Moskowitz Award for outstanding quantitative research relevant to the social investment field for practical significance to practitioners of socially responsible investing, appropriateness and rigor of quantitative methods, and novelty of results. It has also become the most widely cited article ever published in Organization Studies. As of September 2015, this article has been cited 951 times on the Web of Science and 3676 times on Google Scholar. In general, meta-analysis is an empirical quantitative integration of the findings of previous research and corrects for certain study artifacts, such as sampling error or measurement error (Schmidt & Hunter, 2015) and has become the standard method in most quantitative sciences (e.g., medicine, physics, psychology) for drawing overall conclusions in a research area (Hunt, 1997).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management Department, Kansas State University, 1301 Lover’s Lane, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA

    Diane L. Swanson Ph.D.

  2. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, 2471, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

    Marc Orlitzky Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Diane L. Swanson Ph.D.
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  2. Marc Orlitzky Ph.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diane L. Swanson Ph.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. f. Media a. Communication Studies, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Sandra Diehl

  2. Inst. f. Media a. Communication Studies, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Matthias Karmasin

  3. School of Journalism & Media Studies, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA

    Barbara Mueller

  4. Dpt. of Marketing and Int. Management, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Ralf Terlutter

  5. Inst. f. Media a. Communication Studies, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Franzisca Weder

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Swanson, D.L., Orlitzky, M. (2017). Toward a Conceptual Integration of Corporate Social and Financial Performance. In: Diehl, S., Karmasin, M., Mueller, B., Terlutter, R., Weder, F. (eds) Handbook of Integrated CSR Communication. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44700-1_8

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