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the ‘Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’
3
published by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
4
The annual competition results identify the most representative CSR winners in
Taiwan, and the Global Views and CommonWealth Magazines duly announce the award
recipients. Those firms in receipt of a CSR award are defined as ‘CSR winners’ and are
assumed to have superior performance in CSR activities than other firms which have not
received such awards.
The question arises, however, as to whether CSR really benefits firms, and indeed,
whilst some of the related studies have found that CSR is positively related to financial
performance,
5
other studies, such as Aupperle, Carroll, and Hatfield (1985) provide
support for the ‘trade-off’ hypothesis, describing a situation in which engagement in social
responsibility activities can result in the siphoning off of capital and the downgrading of
the financial profit status of a firm.
A number of studies have set out to investigate why such firms wish to engage in
CSR and disclose related valuable information to the public; for example, Eberl and
Schwaiger (2005) found evidence of corporate reputation having a positive effect on the
future performance of the firm, whilst Lai, Chiu, Yang, and Pai (2010) concluded that
CSR and corporate reputation could have positive effects on industrial brand equity and
brand performance. Thus, through positive CSR activities, firms can seek to establish a
good image and further enhance their corporate performance. Furthermore, in addition to
disclosing CSR information in their annual reports or websites, firms can also deliver such
information to stakeholders through the media.
The corporate reputation of a firm can, however, be affected by both good and bad
news (Wry, Deephouse, and McNamara, 2006); indeed, Chen and Liu (2005) suggested
that firms can manipulate their reputation in three ways: firstly through the ‘reputation
effect’ since higher reputation can promote investment; secondly, by strengthening the
3 The guidelines consider subjects under the headings of: (i) Concepts and principles; (ii) General
policies; (iii) Disclosure; (iv) Employment and industrial relations; (v) Environment; (vi) Combating
bribery; (vii) Consumer interests; (viii) Science and technology; (ix) Competition; and (x) Taxation.
4 The OECD provides a forum for governments to work together to share their experiences and seek
solutions to common problems.
(http://www.oecd.org/about/).
5 Examples include Preston and O’Bannon (1997), Simpson and Kohers (2002), Luo and Bhattacharya
(2006), Wu and Shen (2013), and Chih, Miao, and Chuang (2014).