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1、外文翻译-美国公司提供的企业社会责任信息披露 本科毕业论文设计外 文 翻 译外文题目 The Supply of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Among US Firms 外文出处 Journal of Business Ethics 200984P497-527 外文作者 Lori Holder-WebbJeffrey RCohenLeda Nath David Wood 原文The Supply of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Among US FirmsIntroduct
2、ionCorporate social responsibility CSR activity is an area of intense and increasing interest both on the practice and academic fronts Investor interest in rms that engage in these activities has grown dramatically Between 1995 and 2005 investments of professionally managed assets grew from 7 trilli
3、on to 244 trillion while the share of these assets invested in socially responsible investments grew from 639 billion to 229 trillion Social Investment Forum SIF 2006 At the same time large institutional investors and multistakeholder groups including the UN Principles for Responsible Investment pro
4、ject the Global Reporting Initiative GRI 2006 and the CERES a coalition of investors and public interest groups have focused attention on the materiality of social and environmental information to equity analysis The magnitude and growth of socially responsible investing SRI assets has driven an equ
5、ally dramatic growth in the need for information The objective of this study is to document the disclosure patterns of CSR by US rms Investors are not the only interested parties CSR activity provides an increasing focus of product development and marketing practitioners Research demonstrates that c
6、ertain types of CSR activity produce value for rms in terms of brand loyalty and marketing advantages Brown and Dacin 1997 Sen and Bhattacharya 2001 As Handleman and Arnold 1999 p 36 notein any community it is common to nd retailers donating to local charities sponsoring little league sports teams a
7、nd proudly displaying the national ag These actions demonstrate the retailers adherence to unwritten but powerful normative rules of acceptable social conduct such as becoming involved with the community and promoting national prideWhile the question of what exactly motivates rms to engage in CSR pr
8、actices is a matter for ongoing research it is clear from the growth in both SRI assets and customer markets for socially responsible goods that there is a need for information on these practices The historical emphasis of traditional nancial information does not answer the needs of these parties wh
9、o require information not only about future earnings but also about the rms social and environmental responsibility and interactions with the environment and home communities Adams 2004 Anderson et al 2005 The concern with non-nancial factors as well as with equity returns results in a demand for gr
10、eater accountability from managers According to the SIF p 5 issues now occupying mainstream consciousnesscorporate governance transparency accountability and greater disclosure have long been central to the practice of social investing Most of the work in this area is directed at examining disclosur
11、es from European and Australian rms and nearly all multi-national studies indicate international differences in disclosure behavior In North America Cormier and Magnan 1999 proposed a costbenet approach to environmental disclosures The costs are the costs that other parties other than shareholders w
12、ill use the information and the benets are the reduction in information asymmetry between managers and shareholders Cormier and Magnan 1999 tested this on a sample of Canadian rms and found that variables such as a rms reliance on capital markets and the trading volume for its stock were associated
13、with increased environmental disclosure They also conclude that environmental disclosures are increasing over time and that the increased disclosure in Canada could be a function of the less litigious reporting environment found in Canada as opposed to the United States Alnajjar 2000 examined the 19
14、90 social responsibility disclosures of Fortune 500 companies He found that size and protability affected the quality and quantity of disclosure Since there have been a number of changes in the disclosure environment since 1990 when the data was collected for the Alnajjar 2000 study and since the Co
15、rmier and Magnan 1999 looked at Canadian rms it is not clear how US corporations in the 2000s have responded to these increased demands for CSR information Furthermore prior research evaluating the content of CSR disclosures has focused primarily on a single reporting format generally the annual rep
16、ort more recently the corporate website Gray et al 1995 has suggested that the use of a single format for analysis purposes may be signicantly limiting the understanding that can be derived about CSR disclosure behavior We therefore extend this literature by exploring the entire identiable body of p
17、ublic disclosures made by the sample rms during 2004 A major contribution of our paper is the development of a means to assess directly the emphasis that management places on disseminating a given type of information prior research has largely relied upon frequency of disclosure alone as a proxy for
18、 emphasis In this paper we evaluate the state of reporting of social and environmental responsibility often known as corporate social responsibility or CSR reporting among a sample of US rms to determine what types of information are being provided and through what means of transmission We perform a
19、 content analysis on the disclosures made by a size-and industry-stratied sample of 50 publicly traded US rms during 2004 Results suggest that companies disclose a wide variety of CSR information through mandated and voluntary media Consistent with prior research we nd size-and industry-driven diffe
20、rences in disclosure behavior Our results suggest differences in the pattern and volume of disclosure in US rms when compared with other studies examining global enterprises In the next section we review the relevant theory and research and present the research questions and hypotheses Then we descr
21、ibe the research method and discuss the results We conclude with the implications of the study for reporting activists accounting rms regulators and academics who are reconsidering the nature of corporate reporting of non-nancial informationLiterature review research questions and hypothesesIt is di
22、fcult from an academic and theoretical perspective to disentangle the differences between a rms decision to engage in CSR activities and the decision on why how and when to report on those activities to stakeholders The choice of broad theoretical framework depends on whether the researcher approach
23、es the question of CSR from an economic or an ethical standpoint Cetindamar and Husoy 2007 Ethical theories indicate that these activities should be promoted because they are the right thing to doEconomic theories indicate that these activities should be promoted only to the degree that they create
24、shareholder wealth through increasing protVirtually all theoretical approaches carry the implication that it is not enough to partake of a CSR action it is necessary then to disseminate information about the action that has been taken A matter of signicant difference between the theories pertains to
25、 what actions should be taken and who should be informed of them To some extent the answer to the rst drives the answer to the second if the primary goal of the activity is to enlist the support of a particular party the rm will of necessity publicize the activity through channels likely to reach th
26、at party Therefore before launching an exploration of the approaches to disclosure we offer a brief overview of the why of CSR activity Neo-classical economics Bird et al 2007 adopt a traditional economic approach to the question suggesting that managers should apply net present value NPV analysis t
27、o all potential CSR activities and take only the actions that result in a positive NPV and thus increase shareholder wealth An important element of this theory in the CSR context is the neo-classical notion that the shareholder is the only stakeholder of signicant interest This study nds that market
28、s are slow to impound the valuation implications of non-event-type actions into market prices with the exception of diversity initiatives While the authors do not explicitly consider the matter of information dissemination the implication of their approach is that disclosure should take place throug
29、h the channels to which shareholders are accustomed ie mandatory lings such as annual reports and 10-Ks A problematic issue for the traditional neo-classical approach to CSR is that unlike production decisions CSR activities and their outcomes may not yield the mathematical tractability necessary fo
30、r reliable NPV analysis Marketing strategy Another stream of inquiry that suggests that CSR may be motivated mainly by wealth concerns is found in the marketing literature see Robin and Reidenbach 1987 for an extensive survey of this literature Brown and Dacin 1997 provide empirical evidence that co
31、nsumer beliefs about products are inuenced by the information that they possess both about corporate ability the producers competitive advantage and about the producers CSR even though the CSR policies are often unrelated to the companys ability to produce Both items are key elements in creating a g
32、ood corporate reputation posited by numerous theorists to provide a source of economic benets 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 exert negative effects on consumer behavior while positive CSR
33、perceptions exert positive effects on consumer behavior They note that even though there is potential economic value in doing so it can be difcult to communicate corporate positions built around developing CSR associations a need potentially answered by CSR disclosures in the public forumHandelman a
34、nd Arnold 1999 provide further evidence on wealth creation through marketing activities subsumed under CSR They suggest that consumers appear to possess a demand for intangible factors indicating congruence with local social norms and values and that the rms promotion of these elements may yield a s
35、trategic angle equal to that of competitive positioning and product attributesConsistent with Brown and Dacin 1997 they nd that negative institutional associations exert a signicant negative effect on customer perceptions and behavior and suggest that stakeholders have a minimal level of institution
36、al actions below which even highly positioned rms begin to experience negative consequences Hooghiemstra 2000 suggests that CSR activity is a form of impression management for the rm This image management theory which encompasses matters of corporate identity and corporate image is likewise driven b
37、y direct economic concerns such as customer perceptions and access to capital markets The marketing-oriented literature on CSR activity suggests these actions are a strategic tool to build and maintain customer loyalty and market share The implications for disclosure are that the primary targets for
38、 information are the existing customers and members of the public with a general interest and that the content of the disclosure will be chosen to emphasize congruence with customer values Political economy A third theoretical approach considers these actions through the lens of the political econom
39、y Campbell et al 2003 Cormier and Gordon 2001 Deegan 2002Deegan and Gordon 1996Dowling and Pfeffer 1975 Gray et al 1995a Guthrie and Parker 1990 ODonovan 2002 Maignan and Ralston 2002 In this approach the rm is not considered to be an economic entity that can be divorced from its social context it i
40、s instead an organic organism that is a party to a social contract with the other members of its context For the rm to survive it must obtain the support and approval of its stakeholders whether those be primary stakeholders those without whose support the rm cannot function at all including custome
41、rs suppliers or providers of labor and capital or secondary stakeholders who are indirectly afliated but in a position to signicantly inuence the rms success including regulators and media Clarkson 1995 CSR activity and the consequent disclosure is a part of the ongoing communication process require
42、d in order to enlist and maintain that support Gray et al 1995a Under this general heading researchers have variously advanced theoretical arguments based on stakeholder theory Clarkson 1995Hooghiemstra 2000 Maignan and Ralston 2002 and on legitimation ie Campbell 2000Grayet al 1995a to explain both
43、 CSR activities and disclosureLegitimation pertains to efforts on the part of the rm to establish maintain or repair public perception of its dedication to stakeholder norms and values thus evincing respect for the social contract that permits it access to capital and labor markets and other economi
44、c resources necessary to ensure organizational survival Dowling and Pfeffer 1975 outline three means to establishing or improving legitimacy adapting operations to conform to existing societal expectations altering social denitions to conform with existing rm operations or engaging in communication
45、to promote its public identication with socially legitimate symbols values and institutions The degree to which the organization is visible andor relies on social and political support drives the concern for legitimacy and consequent access to resources and support Dowling and Pfeffer 1975 A potenti
46、al issue with applying legitimacy theory to CSR activity is that social norms and values are largely a function of temporal matters as issues are brought to the attention of society they seem to replace other issues of prior focus Bird et al 2007 Campbell 2000 2003 Campbell et al 2003 Gray et al 199
47、5a Guthrie and Parker 1990 Therefore for legitimacy theory to yield rmly testable hypotheses it must be possible to identify both the population with whom the rm is concerned with establishing legitimacy and the values that the population holds at the specic point in time SourceLori Holder-WebbJeffr
48、ey RCohenLeda NathDavid WoodThe Supply of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Among US Firms JJournal of Business Ethics200984P497-527译文美国公司提供的企业社会责任信息披露引言企业社会责任活动这个领域在实际操作和学术前沿方面正受到越来越多的强烈关注投资者对于从事这些活动的公司的关注急遽地增长从1995年至2005年投资了专业的管理资产从7万亿美元上升到244万亿美元而这些资产的份额投资于社会责任从6390亿美元上升到29万亿美元 社会投资论坛SIF2006 同时大型机构投资者和多方利益相关团体包括联合国负责投资项目的原则全球报告倡议组织GRI2006年以及投资者和公众的利益集团联盟CERES都集中关注社会和环境信息对股票分析的重要性社会责任投资SRI的资产的规模和增长带动了对信息需求的同步增长这项研究的目的是记录美国公司对企业社会责任的披露方式投资者并不是对这些唯一感兴趣的人士企业社会责任活动导致了人们对产品开发和市场实践的重视日益增加研究表明某些类型的企业社会责任活动对公司的品牌忠诚度和市场优势很有价值布朗和达欣1997森和巴塔查亚
