CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 345Corporate Social Responsibility ReportingCorporate Identity and ReputationEnvironmental Sustainability in Business

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 162 of the 166 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Robustness of the Corporate Social and Financial Performance Relation: A Second‐Order Meta‐Analysis

Open access
Busch, Timo, Friede, Gunnar·2018·Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
DOI 10.1002/csr.1480
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

For many decades, there has been a debate about the relation between corporate social/environmental performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP). Our study presents a review of academic research on this topic by applying a second‐order meta‐analysis. The data sample combines 25 previous meta‐analyses yielding a sample size of one million observations. Our results demonstrate a highly significant, positive, robust, and bilateral CSP‐CFP relation. The relation is positive regardless of whether firms focus on ecological or social aspects, though corporate reputation turns out to be a key CSP determinant. We find a particularly strong CSP‐CFP relation for operational CFP. Furthermore, we add a new perspective on potential biases resulting from the studies’ publishing source: social issues‐oriented journals and methodological weaker papers do not distort the positive CSP‐CFP relation. Our conclusion is: Based on the extant literature, the business case for being a good firm is undeniable. © 2018 The Authors. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1002/csr.1480

Cites

162 of 162 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 166 references

Research works printed but not linked: 13

  1. Aldag RJ, 1978, Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy (Vol. 1), 165
  2. 10.2307/257302 · DOI
  3. 10.1111/j.1468-036X.2012.00643.x · DOI
  4. 10.2307/258888 · DOI
  5. Donaldson T, 1995, Theory the Stakeholder of the Concepts, Evidence, Corporation: and Implications, Management, 20, 65
  6. Friedman M, 1962, Capitalism and Freedom, 40th Anniv
  7. 10.3102/10769986006002107 · DOI · Paper page
  8. Levitt T, 1958, The dangers of social responsibility, Harvard Business Review, 36, 41
  9. 10.2307/256342 · DOI
  10. 10.2307/259398 · DOI · Paper page
  11. Sutton AJ, 2009, The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta‐Analysis, 435
  12. 10.2307/258135 · DOI
  13. 10.5465/amr.1986.4283976 · DOI · Paper page

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–300 of 344

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Busch, T., & Friede, G.
Affiliations
Universität Hamburg (DE)
Corresponding author
Busch, Timo
ORCID
Venue
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2018-03-30
Volume
25
Issue
4
Pages
583-608
ISSN
  • 1535-3958 (ISSN-L)
  • 1535-3966
DOI
10.1002/csr.1480
OpenAlex
W2795278713
Cited by
345
References
166
Citations by year
2026: 40 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 56 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 55 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 4
FWCI
40.52
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Identity and Reputation
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
Keywords
corporate social performance, corporate financial performance, corporate reputation, ecological performance, social performance, operational performance, publication bias

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review