기업의 사회적 책임 평판의 상호의존성

Many scholars have long investigated the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate performance. They contend that a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputation formed by its CSP ultimately affects firm performance. Scholars studying corporate reputation have suggested that a firm’s reputation depends on its own behaviors and the behaviors of surrounding firms. Building on the interdependent reputation literature, although it is plausible to infer that surrounding firms’ collective CSP contributes to a common CSR reputation, thereby affecting firm performance, CSR scholars have paid little attention to the interdependence of CSR reputations. Therefore, this paper aims to fill the gap in the literature on CSR by investigating how surrounding firms’ CSP in the same industry affects financial performance. Specifically, we predict that collective CSP in an industry is positively related to a focal firm’s financial performance. This is because building on the categorization process, prior studies have suggested that audiences tend to figure out a focal firm’s characteristics based on a common schema for an industry to which the focal firm belongs. That is, when outputs firms produce are closely substitutable, audiences tend to consider the firms as the members in an industry because the firms in the same industry generally utilize similar processes and have similar characteristics. For example, as such, if there are many good firms in an industry, audiences are likely to consider a focal firm in the industry as a good one because the industry’s favorable reputation formed by surrounding firms’ collective CSP can spill over to the focal firm in the same industry. We also examine under what condition the categorization process can be facilitated because the interdependent effect of a common CSR reputation formed by surrouding firms’ CSP happens through the categorization of stakeholders into ingroup and outgroup members. Specifically, we contend that the interdependent effect of a common CSR reputation will be strengthened as an industry to which a focal firm belongs is visible to stakeholders. This is because a highly visible industry is more easily exposed to stakeholders than a less visible industry so that they can be more aware of and familiar with the highly visible industry, thereby amplifying the interdependent effect of a common CSR reputation through the categorization process. To test our ideas, we employed panel data regressions with fixed effects from 2004 to 2009 using the Korea Economic Justice Institute (KEJI) index, which is annually measured and published by the KEJI, because scholars have conducted empirical studies on CSR in various contexts using the KEJI index as a valid measurement tool for CSP. The empirical results of this study are as follows. First, this study finds that CSP has a positive effect on financial performance. Second, we find support for the hypothesis that surrounding firms’ CSP is positively related to firm performance. Third, we find that the positive relationship between surrounding firms’ CSP and financial performance becomes stronger as the industry to which a focal firm belongs is visible. Our findings imply that the relationship between CSP and firm performance needs to be understood from a perspective of the interdependence of CSR reputations.