Business Groups and Corporate Social Responsibility

ORCID Identifiers

0000-0003-0715-7011

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Business Ethics

Publication Date

12-1-2018

Abstract

© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature. There is a growing literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR), but few have focused on the implications of business groups for CSR. We examine the antecedents and outcomes of CSR behaviors of group firms in Korea. We find that group affiliation is associated with higher CSR overall and for its major societal and environmental components. However, the ownership disparity between cash flow and control by controlling inside shareholders is associated with lower CSR, consistent with opportunistic rent expropriation theory. We further find that CSR initiatives can impact group firms positively in the event of bad events, consistent with insurance theory. This motive for CSR as a means of enhancing reputation capital to buffer the bad events is pronounced for group firms because of group-wide dissemination of negative reputational externality.

ISSN

0167-4544

Publisher

Springer Netherlands

Volume

153

Issue

4

First Page

931

Last Page

954

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Business group, Chaebol, Corporate social responsibility, Ownership disparity, Reputation capital, Reputational externality

Scopus ID

85047134565

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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