The value of being socially responsible: A primal-dual approach

Daniela Puggioni and Spiro Stefanou

European Journal of Operational Research, 2019, vol. 276, issue 3, 1090-1103

Abstract: This study attempts to formalize and explain the process through which Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is created incorporating it into a production model as one of the outputs comprising the technology. Our framework allows for analyzing technical efficiency and deriving a system of internal shadow prices to quantify the overall value as well as the marginal impact of implementing socially responsible activities. The empirical application focuses on the food and beverage manufacturing sector where we encounter high levels of technical efficiency among the firms included in the analysis. Our findings also document a positive average shadow price of CSR activities, implying that the net value of implementing these activities is positive as their benefit exceeds the cost. Regarding the value at the margin, we show that increasing the socially responsible commitment positively contributes to the creation of firm value. Conversely, reducing the CSR engagement has a negative marginal impact, indicating that firms perceive lower levels of CSR as very costly and damaging.

Keywords: Productivity and competitiveness; Decision processes; Data envelopment analysis; Shadow values; Corporate social responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221719301006
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Value of Being Socially Responsible. A Primal-Dual Approach (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:276:y:2019:i:3:p:1090-1103

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.01.065

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().