Abstract
This study examines the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on Chinese firms’ probability of survival using 2426 firm-year observations over the period 2011–2019. We find evidence that CSR has a positive effect on firms’ survival prospects. This effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The result is robust to an instrumental variable approach and several quasi-natural experiments. We further decompose CSR into its components, and we identify a more prominent positive effect of the CSR environmental component for SOEs. SOEs generally appear to have an easier path to survival when engaged in CSR activities. The results remain valid when accounting for a set of robustness checks related to alternative CSR measures, financial constraints, provincial diversity, exogenous shocks, and placebo tests. Overall, this study provides evidence that CSR activities improve firms’ probability of survival in a government intervention setting.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1014–1039 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | British Journal of Management |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 16 Jul 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2024 |
Bibliographical note
We would like to thank the editor, Douglas Cumming, and the three anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and comments that vastly improved the paper and brought it to its current form.Data Availability Statement
No data availability statement.Keywords
- corporate social responsibility
- firm survival
- state ownership
Access to Document
- Fernandes_etal_BJM_Corporate_Social_Responsibility_AAM
This accepted author manuscript has been made open access under the University of Aberdeen Rights Retention Policy. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Final published version available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12750