The impact of firm age on corporate social responsibility
(A2020-62801)

AUTHORS

HeaJeong Han, YonSei University; Youngchan Kim, YonSei University

KEYWORDS

Firm age; CSR value embeddedness; Corporate social responsibility adverse events

ABSTRACT

Using panel data from 2010 to 2018 for 184 US-listed firms, we examine how the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSR adverse events (CSR AE) affect the corporate financial performance(CFP) and investigate the moderating effect of firm age on the relationship between CSR and CFP. Result shows that firm age effects on CFP positively however, it negatively moderates the positive relationship between CSR and CFP. The impact of CSR on CFP is very weak for older firms. We explain these results based on the context of CSR value embeddedness to firm image and stereotypes. CSR AE has a significant negative impact on CFP regardless the difference of firm age. In addition, we have verified that CSR AE's negative impact on CFP could be mitigated by the implementation of corporate social media. As the impact of CSR on CFP is different by firm age, we suggest that older firm are more focused on managing CSR AE and younger firm are encouraged to devote more to CSR activities.