Firm Characteristics, Industry Context, and Investor Reactions to Environmental CSR: A Stakeholder Theory Approach

We use an event study to capture the investor reaction to the first Newsweek Green Rankings in September 2009, a notable, multi-dimensional recent development in the rating of corporate environmental CSR performance. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we develop hypotheses about (a) market investor reac...

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Главные авторы: Cordeiro, James J. (Автор) ; Tewari, Manish (Автор)
Формат: Электронный ресурс Статья
Язык:Английский
Проверить наличие: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Опубликовано: 2015
В: Journal of business ethics
Год: 2015, Том: 130, Выпуск: 4, Страницы: 833-849
Другие ключевые слова:B Corporate Sustainability
B Legitimacy
B Newsweek Green Rankings
B Stock market performance
B Stakeholder Management
Online-ссылка: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Итог:We use an event study to capture the investor reaction to the first Newsweek Green Rankings in September 2009, a notable, multi-dimensional recent development in the rating of corporate environmental CSR performance. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we develop hypotheses about (a) market investor reaction to the disclosure of new, relevant corporate environmental performance in both the short and longer (6–12-month) term, (b) whether market investors’ reaction reflects industry context, and (c) whether firm-level contextual variables representing firm size, and market legitimacy significantly impacts the investor reaction. We find that, for the sample of the largest 500 US firms ranked by Newsweek, investors react positively both to the raw and within-industry rankings of green performance in terms of both short-term and longer-term (up to 12 months) returns. Moreover, the investor reaction is significantly influenced by contextual variables such as firm size and firm market legitimacy. Our results are compatible with the inference that rating agencies like Newsweek serve a valuable information dissemination function such that investors in better ranked firms anticipate larger future cash flows due to more positive reactions from key stakeholders such as environmentally-conscious customers, employees, NGOs, regulators, and thus reward these firms with stock price increases. Finally, larger, more visible firms benefit more, while firms which have more market legitimacy (represented by past financial performance) benefit less. We believe these findings will be of considerable interest to scholars of environmental corporate social responsibility.
ISSN:1573-0697
Второстепенные работы:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2115-x