TITLE:
CSR Actions and Financial Distress: Do Firms Change Their CSR Behavior When Signals of Financial Distress Are Identified?
AUTHORS:
Arjola Mecaj, María Isabel González Bravo
KEYWORDS:
Corporate Social Responsibility, Financial Distress, Multidimensional Scaling, Wilcoxon Test, Mann-Whitney Test
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.5 No.4,
April
3,
2014
ABSTRACT:
Many studies have focused on
the relation between financial and economic performance of firms and their
actions on corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, few of them analyze
CSR actions of firms facing decline. The purpose of this paper is to analyze
if a recognized situation of financial distress has an impact on CSR
strategies and modifies the attitude of a set of firms towards responsible
behavior. We use CSR information of healthy and distressed US firms, during the
years 2001-2007, to evidence feasible changes in CSR attitudes induced by
distress position. The results show that healthy firms present changes in all
the year windows analyzed while distressed firms tend to increase their concern
valuation or reduce their strength valuation one year after identifying the
symptoms of economic and financial weaknesses. However, these differences do
not occur in all the dimensions of CSR, when considered separately.