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媒體聲譽對企業社會責任得獎企業其股市表現與財務績效之影響
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Given that CSR winners are invariably going to be consistently involved in social
responsibility activities, it may be reasonable to expect that the media will report CSR
winners more frequently than non-CSR firms; CSR winners do not, therefore, have any
need to interfere in media reporting. In contrast, the more stable pattern for non-CSR firms
implies that they may be attempting to manipulate the media in order to avoid any extreme
good or bad news reports.
In the present study, we argue that as compared to CSR winners, non-CSR firms
may tend to engage more actively in attempts to spin media reporting in order to improve
their media reputation. This is consistent with the viewpoints of Chen and Liu (2005) and
Lu et al. (2011) —such firms are motivated to manipulate their media reputation, or
indeed, manage their media relationship. Despite this, the media reputation of CSR
winners is consistently found to be higher than that of non-CSR firms after CSR award
announcements, thereby providing support for our Hypothesis 3.
Figure 7 illustrates the average media coverage trend for CSR winners and non-CSR
firms during CSR award announcement periods. Media exposure is generally found to be
significantly higher for CSR winners than non-CSR firms, although the difference is
reduced closer to the announcement date. Despite any potential attempts by non-CSR
firms to reduce the gap in media coverage with the approach of the CSR announcement
date, as posited in Hypothesis 3 and consistent with the findings of Chang et al. (2010)
and Zyglidopoulos et al. (2012); the coverage of CSR winners is consistently higher than
that of non-CSR firms. This suggests that: (i) firms engaging in CSR may have a greater
likelihood of being reported in the media, and thus, the information relating to CSR
winners may be more readily transmitted to investors; and (ii) non-CSR firms may
actively engage in releasing more information prior to CSR award announcement periods.
Figure 8 shows the average pattern of
SRso
for both CSR winners and non-CSR firms
during CSR award announcement periods. The average
SRso
for CSR winners is generally
higher than that for non-CSR firms, although it is interesting to note the reversal in the 20
trading-day period prior to the event date, when, as compared to non-CSR firms, the
average news sentiment for CSR winners is relatively pessimistic. This phenomenon
disappears after the CSR award announcement date, when the difference between the
average
SRso
trend for CSR winners and non-CSR firms starts to expand again, further
suggesting that non-CSR firms may be releasing more positive news to ‘window dress’
their corporate image.