英语论文网

Abstract
Several research studies have examined corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its effectson business performance, but their results vary widely. This may stem from ﬂawed anal-yses by regressing ﬁnancial performance on corporate social performance, and/or perhapsfrom several inadequately controlled variables. Previous studies did not recognizeinvestment in research and development as a critical variable because there is consider-able empirical evidence to indicate that it has a strong positive impact on proﬁtability. Thismisidentiﬁcation creates biased estimates of the ﬁnancial impact of CSR.Between 2002 and 2004, we examined 1000 Taiwanese cases in which ﬁrms include theirR&D expenditures as one of their business strategies for sustainable development; theyalso identify their charitable expenditures as contributions to CSR. Based on theoreticalassertions and empirical evidence in the literature, we identiﬁed a positive relationshipbetween CSR and ﬁnancial performance. When the model is properly speciﬁed, we foundthat while CSR does not have much positive impact on short-term ﬁnancial performance, itdoes offer a remarkable long-term ﬁscal advantage.

Introduction
Although social issues have been debated for centuries, only recently they have joined the mainstream managementliterature as a legitimate area of inquiry. In his book Give and Take, Levy[1] espouses the belief that corporate philanthropyand social initiatives are the heart and soul of business. He stresses that social endeavors must be consistent with businessobjectives for earning proﬁt (heart) and must express the values of serving society (soul).A growing body of research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in social welfare has shown that certain ﬁrms haveresponded to these concerns by devoting more resources to CSR. Considered an active source of competitive advantage, CSRcan be a proactive business strategy and an effective Marketing tool to create and sustain a competitive advantage [2,3].

Corporations realized that to survive and compete in the hyper-competitive global market, they must evolve from ‘‘doinggood’’ to ‘‘doing better’’ [4] and may be to ‘‘doing best’’ by building added societal value. However, in some companies,management has resisted, arguing that additional CSR investment is inconsistent with efforts to maximize proﬁts.This disagreement has prompted researchers to examine the relationship between CSR and ﬁnancial performance in aneffort to assess the validity of these concerns. Existing studies of this relationship have several important theoretical and empirical limitations. One is that these studies sometimes use models that are mis-speciﬁed by omitting variables that havebeen shown to be important determinants of proﬁtability.One such variable is the intensity of the ﬁrm’s R&D investments[5]. Excluding R&D from an econometric model isespecially problematic because there is long-standing theoretical literature that links R&D investment to long-termimprovements in economic performance [6]. R&D should be considered a form of investment in ‘‘technical’’ capital.Investment in technical capital results in knowledge enhancement, w本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。