美国公司提供的企业社会责任信息披露

1、本科毕业论文(设计)外文翻译外文题目the supply of corporate social responsibility disclosure among u.s. firms 外文出处 oournal of business ethics2009 :(84)p497-527 外文作者 lori holder-webbjeffrey r.cohenleda nath david wood 原文：the supply of corporate social responsibility disclosure among u.s. firmslntroduction corporate so

2、cial responsibility csr activity is an area of intense and increasinginterest both on the practice and academic fronts investor interest in rms that engagein these activities has grown dramatically. between 1995 and 2005 investments ofprofessionally managed assets grew from 7 trillion to 24.4 trilli

3、on while the shareof these assets invested in socially responsible investments grew from 639 billion to2.29 trillion social investment forum sif 2oo6.at the same time largeinstitutional investors and multistakeholder groups 一 including the un principles forresponsible investment project the global r

4、eporting initiative gri 2006 and theceres a coalition of investors and public interest groups 一 have focused attention onthe materiality of social and environmental information to equity analysis. themagnitude and growth of socially responsible investing sri assets has driven anequally dramatic grow

5、th in the need for information. the objective of this study is todocument the disclosure patterns of csr by u.s. rms. investors are not the only interested parties csr activity provides an increasingfocus of product development and marketing practitioners research demonstratesthat certain types of c

6、sr activity produce value for rms in terms of brand loyaltyand marketing advantages brown and dacin 1997 sen and bhattacharya 2001. ashandleman and arnold 1999 p. 36 notein any community it is common to ndretailers donating to local charities sponsoring little league sports teams and proudlydisplayi

7、ng the national ag. these actions demonstrate the retailer adherence tounwritten but powerful normative rules of acceptable social conduct such asbecoming involved with the community and promoting national pride while the question of what exactly motivates rms to engage in csr practices isa matter f

8、or ongoing research it is clear from the growth in both sri assets andcustomer markets for socially responsible goods that there is a need for informationon these practices the historical emphasis of traditional nancial information doesnot answer the needs of these parties who require information no

9、t only about futureearnings but also about the rm9s social and environmental responsibility andinteractions with the environment and home communities adams 2004anderson etal. 2005 the concern with non-nancial factors as well as with equity returns resultsin a demand for greater accountability from m

10、anagers according to the sif p. 5 "issues now occupying mainstream consciousness-coiporate governancetransparency accountability and greater disclosure 一 have long been central to thepractice of social investing. most of the work in this area is directed at examining disclosures from europeanan

11、d australian rms and nearly all multi-national studies indicate internationaldifferences in disclosure behavior. in north america cormier and magnan 1999proposed a cost/benet approach to environmental disclosures. the costs are the coststhat other parties other than shareholders will use the informa

12、tion and the benets arethe reduction in information asymmetry between managers and shareholders cormierand magnan 1999 tested this on a sample of canadian rms and found that variablessuch as a rms reliance on capital markets and the trading volume for its stock wereassociated with increased environm

13、ental disclosure. they also conclude thatenvironmental disclosures are increasing over time and that the increased disclosurein canada could be a function of the less litigious reporting environment found incanada as opposed to the united states. alnajjar 2000 examined the 1990 socialresponsibility

14、disclosures of fortune 500 companies. he found that size andprotability affected the quality and quantity of disclosure since there have been anumber of changes in the disclosure environment since 1990 when the data wascollected for the alnajjar 2000 study and since the cormier and magnan 19991ooked

15、 at canadian rms it is not clear how u.s. corporations in the 2000s haveresponded to these increased demands for csr information. furthermore priorresearch evaluating the content of csr disclosures has focused primarily on a singlereporting format generally the annual report more recently the corpor

16、ate website.gray et al. 1995 has suggested that the use of a single format for analysis purposesmay be signicantly limiting the understanding that can be derived about csrdisclosure behavior. we therefore extend this literature by exploring the entireidentiable body of public disclosures made by the

17、 sample rms during 2004. a majorcontribution of our paper is the development of a means to assess directly theemphasis that management places on disseminating a given type of information priorresearch has largely relied upon frequency of disclosure alone as a proxy for emphasis.in this paper we eval

18、uate the state of reporting of social and environmentalresponsibility often known as corporate social responsibility or csr reportingamong a sample of u.s rms to determine what types of information are beingprovided and through what means of transmission. we perform a content analysis onthe disclosu

19、res made by a size-and industry-stratied sample of 50 publicly tradedu.s rms during 2004. results suggest that companies disclose a wide variety ofcsr information through mandated and voluntary media. consistent with priorresearch we nd size-and industry-driven differences in disclosure behavior. ou

20、rresults suggest differences in the pattern and volume of disclosure in u.s. rms whencompared with other studies examining global enterprises. in the next section we review the relevant theory and research and present theresearch questions and hypotheses. then we describe the research method and dis

21、cussthe results. we conclude with the implications of the study for reporting activistsaccounting rms regulators and academics who are reconsidering the nature ofcorporate reporting of non-nancial information.literature review research questions and hypotheses it is difcult from an academic and theo

22、retical perspective to disentangle thedifferences between a mfs decision to engage in csr activities and the decision onwhy how and when to report on those activities to stakeholders. the choice of broadtheoretical framework depends on whether the researcher approaches the question ofcsr from an eco

23、nomic or an ethical standpoint cetindamar and husoy 2007.ethical theories indicate that these activities should be promoted because they are the6'right thing'， to do.economic theories indicate that these activities should bepromoted only to the degree that they create shareholder wealth thro

24、ugh increasingprot.virtually all theoretical approaches carry the implication that it is not enough topartake of a csr action it is necessary then to disseminate information about theaction that has been taken. a matter of signicant difference between the theoriespertains to what actions should be t

25、aken and who should be informed of them. tosome extent the answer to the rst drives the answer to the second: if the primarygoal of the activity is to enlist the support of a particular party the rm will ofnecessity publicize the activity through channels likely to reach that party. thereforebefore

26、launching an exploration of the approaches to disclosure we offer a briefoverview of the "why，of csr activity.neo-classical economics bird et al. 2007 adopt a traditional economic approach to the questionsuggesting that managers should apply net present value npv analysis to allpotential csr ac

27、tivities and take only the actions that result in a positive npv andthus increase shareholder wealth. an important element of this theory in the csrcontext is the neo-classical notion that the shareholder is the only stakeholder ofsignicant interest. this study nds that markets are slow to impound t

28、he valuationimplications of non-event-type actions into market prices with the exception ofdiversity initiatives. while the authors do not explicitly consider the matter ofinformation dissemination the implication of their approach is that disclosure shouldtake place through the channels to which sh

29、areholders are accustomed i.e.mandatory lings such as annual reports and 10-ks a problematic issue for thetraditional neo-classical approach to csr is that unlike production decisions csractivities and their outcomes may not yield the mathematical tractability necessary forreliable npv analysis.mark

30、eting strategyanother stream of inquiry that suggests that csr may be motivated mainly by wealthconcems is found in the marketing literature see robin and reidenbach 1987 for anextensive survey of this literature. brown and dacin 1997 provide empiricalevidence that consumer beliefs about products ar

31、e inuenced by the information thatthey possess both about corporate ability the producer competitive advantage andabout the producer csr even though the csr policies are often unrelated to thecompany ability to produce both items are key elements in creating a goodcorporate reputation posited by num

32、erous theorists to provide a source of economicbenets to an organization see brown and dacin 1997 for a review of this literature.brown and dacin 1997 nd that negative csr perceptions are shown to exertnegative effects on consumer behavior while positive csr perceptions exert positiveeffects on cons

33、umer behavior they note that even though there is potentialeconomic value in doing so it can be difcult to communicate corporate positionsbuilt around developing csr associations: a need potentially answered by csrdisclosures in the public forum.handelman and arnold 1999 provide further evidence on

34、wealth creation throughmarketing activities subsumed under csr they suggest that consumers appear topossess a demand for intangible factors indicating congruence with local social normsand values and that the mvs promotion of these elements may yield a strategic angleequal to that of competitive pos

35、itioning and product attributes. consistent with brown and dacin 1997 they nd that negative institutionalassociations exert a signicant negative effect on customer perceptions and behaviorand suggest that stakeholders have a "minimal level of institutional actions，belowwhich even highly positio

36、ned rms begin to experience negative consequences.hooghiemstra 2000 suggests that csr activity is a form of impression managementfor the rm. this image management theory 一 which encompasses matters ofcorporate identity and corporate image 一 is likewise driven by direct economicconcerns such as custo

37、mer perceptions and access to capital markets. themarketing-oriented literature on csr activity suggests these actions are a strategictool to build and maintain customer loyalty and market share the implications fordisclosure are that the primary targets for information are the existing customers an

38、dmembers of the public with a general interest and that the content of the disclosurewill be chosen to emphasize congruence with customer values political economy a third theoretical approach considers these actions through the lens of thepolitical economy campbell et al. 2003 cormier and gordon 200

39、1 deegan2002deegan and gordon 1996dowling and pfeffer 1975 gray et al. 1995aguthrie and parker 1990 o'donovan 2002 maignan and ralston 2002. in thisapproach the rm is not considered to be an economic entity that can be divorcedfrom its social context it is instead an organic organism that is a p

40、arty to a socialcontract with the other members of its context. for the rm to survive it must obtainthe support and approval of its stakeholders whether those be primary stakeholdersthose without whose support the rm cannot function at all including customerssuppliers or providers of labor and capit

41、al or secondary stakeholders who areindirectly afliated but in a position to signicantly inuence the mfs successincluding regulators and media clarkson 1995 csr activity and the consequentdisclosure is a part of the ongoing communication process required in order to enlistand maintain that support g

42、ray et al. 1995a under this general heading researchershave variously advanced theoretical arguments based on stakeholder theoiy clarkson 1995hooghiemstra 2000 maignan and ralston 2002 and on legitimation i.e.campbell 2000grayet al. 1995a to explain both csr activities and disclosure legitimation pe

43、rtains to efforts on the part of the rm to establish maintain orrepair public perception of its dedication to stakeholder norms and values thusevincing respect for the "social contract that permits it access to capital and labormarkets and other economic resources necessary to ensure organizati

44、onal survival.dowling and pfeffer 1975 outline three means to establishing or improvinglegitimacy: adapting operations to conform to existing societal expectations alteringsocial denitions to conform with existing rm operations or engaging incommunication to promote its public identication with socially legitimate symbolsvalues and institutions. the degree to which the organization is visible and/or relieson social and political support drives the concern for legitimacy and consequentaccess to resources and su