Abstract
While corporate social responsibility was widely discussed in the last forty years of the twentieth century, the idea that business has societal obligations was evident at least as early as the nineteenth century. The concept of corporate social responsibility constantly adapts to the needs of global business. Given the recent development of corporate social responsibility and sustainability ideologies, along with methodologies and criteria used to meet the standards of a “responsible” company. However, a specific connotation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has not been unified, though the norms and standards related to CSR are developing now. There is a growing interest in social responsibility of the corporations among academicians and practitioners. Companies now are not only expected to be responsible to their shareholders but to society in general. During 1972 to 2001, round-about ninety-five empirical evidences have been provided by Margolis and Walsh (2001) and Orlitzky et al. (2003) regarding CSR and financial performance. In these studies, CSR was independent variable ;whereas, financial performance was dependent variable. Fifty three percent showed positive relationship between them, twenty four percent shows no relationship between them, nineteen percent showed mixed relationship with them, and five percent showed negative relationship between them. Dam (2008) also further provided empirical evidences regarding CSR and financial performance but there was one uniqueness and common thing. The uniqueness of work was distribution of empirical findings in tabulated form on the base of return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), return on sales (ROS),Tobin’s Q, and stock market returns and common thing was that only empirical findings from 1972 to 2001 was tabulated. The findings of this study are important for corporations and future researchers on corporate social responsibility and consumer behavior.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility; corporate citizenship; multinational corporations.
