Abstract: We investigate the roles of legal origins and political institutions – believed to be the fundamental determinants of economic outcomes – in corporate social responsibility (CSR). We argue that CSR is an essential path to economic sustainability, and document strong correlations...

We investigate the fundamental determinants and value implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR) around the world. We contrast three broad views on CSR: (1) it is a response to government failure; (2) it reflects individual and societal preferences; (3) it is an equilibrium result of a...

In the corporate finance tradition starting with Berle & Means (1923), corporations should generally be run so as to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) generally considers CSR as a managerial agency problem and a waste of corporate resources,...

In the corporate finance tradition starting with Berle & Means (1923), corporations should generally be run so as to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) generally considers CSR as a managerial agency problem and a waste of corporate resources,...

In acknowledging and exploiting the substantial heterogeneity between family firms, scholars are increasingly stepping away from the dichotomization of family influence to better understand critical nuances that explain how, why, and when family firms differ from their nonfamily counterparts....

This paper investigates the relationship between ownership and corporate social responsibility. There are at least two reasons why ownership may have an impact on corporate social responsibility. First, major shareholders are visible to outsiders and may therefore become the target of activists...

With the emergence of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) around the world managing equity of over $8 trillion, their impact on the corporate landscape and social welfare are being scrutinized. This study investigates whether and how SWFs incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG)...

We define creative companies by means of the Competing Value Framework, and we identify them by means of textual analysis. We show that a creative corporate culture is an important driver of innovation, as measured by the number of patents a firm files for as well as the patents' importance...

In the corporate finance tradition, starting with Berle and Means (1932), corporations should generally be run to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) considers CSR an agency problem and a waste of corporate resources. Given our identification...

A firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and its country's legal origin are strongly correlated. This relation is valid for various CSR ratings coming from several large datasets that comprise more than 23,000 large companies from 114 countries. We find that CSR is more strongly...