The weighting of CSR dimensions: one size does not fit all

Gunther Capelle-Blancard and Aurélien Petit ()
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Aurélien Petit: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: Although the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is fundamentally multidimensional, most studies use composite scores to assess corporate social performance (CSP). How relevant are such composite scores? How the CSR dimensions are weighted? Should the weighting scheme be the same across sectors? This article proposes an original weighting scheme of CSR strengths and concerns, at the sector level, which is proportional to media and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) scrutiny. The authors show that previous CSP assessments underweight environmental and corporate governance concerns. Moreover, findings suggest that firms that are exposed to the closest scrutiny are usually criticized on one single dimension: for instance, banks for bad corporate governance, and basic-resource firms for environmental damage. Composite scores based on equal weights hence misrepresent CSP and the difference in CSR between sectors.

Keywords: Corporate social performance; Corporate social responsibility; ESG disclosures; Composite index; KLD ratings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Business and Society, 2016, ⟨10.1177/0007650315620118⟩

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Working Paper: The weighting of CSR dimensions: one size does not fit all (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01297088

DOI: 10.1177/0007650315620118

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