Corporate Social Responsibility across Industries: When can who do well by doing good?
Andreas G. F. Hoepnerab, Pei-Shan Yua* & John Fergusonc
School of Management, University of St. Andrews, The Gateway, North Haugh, St. Andrews, KY16 9SS, UK Academic Fellow, Principles for Responsible Investment, PRI Secretariat, c/o UN Global Compact, DC2-612, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, US c Department of Accounting & Finance, University of Strathclyde, 100 Cathedral Street, Glasgow, G4 0LN, UK b a

This version (3.0): March, 2010 First version (1.0): October, 2008 ___________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: While much of the previous literature considers whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) pays, we take a more nuanced perspective, theoretically and empirically, by investigating when CSR pays and for whom? Theoretically, we develop two contingency perspectives. First, we extend previous work to argue that CSR’s impacts on corporate financial performance (CFP) are moderated by five factors: CSR form, firm characteristics, time, national framework and industrial characteristics. Focusing on industrial characteristics, we theorise that differences in industries’ dependency on certain stakeholder groups, their proximity to the end consumer, their potential for social and environmental damages and their level of product / service differentiation moderate CSR’s value relevance. Our second contingency perspective considers for whom CSR might pay. While previous research has almost exclusively viewed CSR’s value from a corporate perspective, we argue that stakeholders, government, and investor perspective are also relevant. Empirically, we analyse CSR’s value across ten industry sectors from a corporate and investor aspect, respectively. We find that CSR has substantial value for corporations in the health care, industrials, and