Title: An empirical examination of the corporate social performance – the financial performance relationship in China based on the different measures perspective

Authors: Wei Wu, Li Ke-ke

Addresses: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, 430072, Luojia Hill, Wuhan, Hubei, China. ' School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, 430074, Southern Lake, Wuhan, Hubei, China

Abstract: Previous work has indicated that the empirical relationship between Corporate Social Performance (CSP) and financial performance has some contradictory results. Using a set of large-sample data on the surveyed questionnaire, this paper reports that CSP is partially found to be positively associated with Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) in China. The results also show that CSP consists of CSP disclosures, CSP reputation ratings and social audits measures, while the measures of CSP is associated with three broad strategies: market-based, accounting-based and perceptual (survey) measures. The study affirms that the different measures of CSP have a different effect on the different measures of CFP after controlling for industry type and firm size (with size measured in three ways).

Keywords: corporate social performance; corporate social responsibility; CSR; corporate financial performance; CFP; relationship; empirical examination; regression analysis; different measures; EMBA students; MBA students; industry type; firm size; CSP disclosure; CSP reputation; social audits.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2009.025935

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2009 Vol.6 No.4, pp.389 - 403

Published online: 25 May 2009 *

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