Topic: The Effects of CSR Reporting Frameworks and Financial Conditions on Managers’ Willingness to Invest in CSR

Time: October 8th, 2016 (Saturday) 10:00-11:30

Location: Room 203,Jiageng building 2

Reporter：Johnny Jermias,Simonfraser University

Moderator: Professor Yasheng Chen

Lectures intro:

Previous studies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have focusedon the impacts of CSR disclosure on the decision making of external users ofCSR information. This study contributes to the literature through its focus onhow CSR disclosure impacts on the decision making of internal users of thisinformation. Specifically, we investigated the impacts of CSR reportingframeworks and companies’ financial conditions on managers’ willingness toinvest in a CSR project. Our findings supported our hypothesis that managersare significantly more willing to invest in a CSR project when their companiescan disclose their CSR activities using a standalone CSR reporting framework.We also found that an integrated reporting framework did not incrementallyaffect managers’ willingness to invest in a CSR project relative to thefinancial statement disclosure framework. Moreover, we found that companies'financial conditions did not affect the likelihood of managers investing in aCSR project. Our findings extend legitimacy theory by suggesting that the meansof legitimation, via standalone reporting frameworks, have varying impacts onmanagers’ behavior. This study contributes to the literature on the impacts ofvarious reporting mechanisms on internal decision making.