Corporate Responsibility and Financial Performance: The Paradox of Social Cost

The core idea of corporate social responsibility, the notion that companies have a responsibility beyond legal requirements, is by now deeply embedded in the corporate cultures of the largest U.S. companies. The authors suggest that productive debate now focuses on the following two issues. First, what are the impacts of existing corporate social responsibility programs for the corporation? And, second, what constitutes the precise contours of this responsibility? This book explores these two themes.

The issue of how corporate social responsibility affects individual companies engaged in socially responsible activities is not well understood. Further, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate corporate social responsibility activities has not always been clearly drawn. This book, therefore, is designed to fill in some of the gaps in our understanding. This is done by carefully organizing and reviewing the relevant and growing literature on corporate social responsibility. In addition, this book reports on the results of two original empirical studies designed to further explore the relationship between corporate social responsibility and traditional financial performance. This book has profound implications for business executives and researchers in finance, accounting, business ethics, and business and society.

MOSES L. PAVA is currently Associate Professor of Accounting and holds the Alvin H. Einbender Chair in Business Ethics at the Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of numerous articles on financial disclosures and corporate social responsibility and is author of The Shareholder's Use of Corporate Annual Reports (1993).

JOSHUA KRAUSZ is Gershon and Merle Stern Professor of Banking and Finance at the Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University. His research interests include financial analysis, ethics and social responsibility, financial accounting, options and derivatives, price behavior, capital budgeting, and taxation.