Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Value Creation from a Stakeholder Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed how companies and institutions have devoted significant effort to developing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies, basing their decision on the improvement in company results and the subsequent benefits for shareholders and other stakeholders. CSR means that managers must go beyond the mere satisfaction of the shareholders and take steps to establish balanced relations with all their stakeholders. The principles behind the CSR approach empower stakeholder governance. To test whether CSR policy constitutes a factor in value creation for shareholders and certain stakeholders such as employees, creditors and the State, we conducted an explanatory study, using a Correlated Random Effects approach, which compares the socially responsible companies included in the Spanish sustainability index, FTSE4Good Ibex, with the companies listed on the other indices of the IBEX family. On the one hand, the data show that sustainability reporting is well established in large companies in Spain but that it needs to be introduced more extensively in small and medium-sized enterprises. On the other hand, the findings point out that CSR has a positive and significant influence on the distribution of value in favor of the State, a negative influence for employees and no influence on other stakeholders.