Corporate social responsibilty and firm performances: an empirical study on large firms

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept becoming more and more relevant for firm managers. Many studies analyse the optimal framework of CSR report, highlighting their advantages, especially because they are often adjoined to balance-sheet documents in last years. The following work studies the relationship between the CSR report and the performances of large firms. Econometric analysis has been run for the empirical analysis on the economic performances of firms, while the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist indexes have been used for building technical efficiency scores and productivity measures. Results suggest that CSR-oriented firms improve their profitability and market share and also the analysis of the efficiency and productivity highlights CSR firms obtain better performances than the other ones. It’s then clear that CSR is very relevant for large firms and then it is necessary that managers take it into account in defining firm strategy.