Bayesian Network Analysis for the Dynamic Prediction of Financial Performance Using Corporate Social Responsibility Activities

This study analyzes the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities on financial performances using Bayesian Network. The research tries to overcome the issues of the uniform assumption of a linear function between financial performance and CSR activities in multiple regression analysis widely used in previous studies. It is required to infer a causal relationship between activities of CSR which have an impact on the financial performances. Identifying the relationship would empower the firms to improve their financial performance by informing the decision makers about the different CSR activities that influence the financial performance of the firms. This research proposes General Bayesian Network (GBN) and presents Markov Blanket induced from GBN. It is empirically demonstrated that all the proposals presented in this study are statistically significant by the results of the research conducted by Korean Economic Justice Institute (KEJI) under Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) which investigated approximately 200 companies in Korea based on Korean Economic Justice Institute Index (KEJI index) from 2005 to 2011. The Bayesian Network to effectively infer the properties affecting financial performances through the probabilistic causal relationship. Moreover, I found that there is a causal relationship among CSR activities variable; that is Environment protection is related to Customer protection, Employee satisfaction, and firm size; Soundness is related to Total CSR Evaluation Score, Debt-Assets Ratio. Though the what-if analysis, I suggest to the sensitive factor among the explanatory variables.