Research Briefs

Research finds that employees who volunteer appear to have better overall job performance and are more focused while at work.

Increase the success of your corporate citizenship efforts and improve the performance of your employees by encouraging them to participate in volunteer opportunities. Employees who volunteer are more engaged with their work and feel more connected to their job.

Organizations seeking to achieve high corporate social performance ratings should practice conservative accounting, which results in a wider distribution of money to various stakeholders of the company, rather than just managers or shareholders.

Only firms in highly regulated industries appear to derive value from political spending. In regulated industries, such as banking, political spending is associated with stronger market performance.

This research demonstrates that when a firm engages in high levels of CSR, that firm is more apt to reap the most benefits from their marketing efforts.

Companies are more likely to modify existing sustainability products and processes than create new ones; however, these activities result in a greater financial gain, though they may potentially involve more risk and costs to implement.

Strong product social performance—the responsible development and marketing of products and services—has a positive impact on firm performance, more so that of environmental performance. It is necessary that environmental issues are communicated with transparency in order for a firm to realize benefits from environmental performance.

Firm performance is improved by female representation in top management, especially in those organizations focusing on innovation.

This research finds that the purchase intent and attitude towards the company can both be increased by high company/cause fit in cause related marketing. It appears that high fit can be more important in increasing purchase intent than company/consumer congruence.

A study shows that firms that pass shareholder-sponsored proposals to alter corporate governance experience increased shareholder value.

The level of engagement in sustainability activities, as well as the transparency of sustainability reporting, is affected by industry type, as firms from industries with higher pollution levels are more likely to participate in sustainability programs. In addition, membership and participation in a voluntary sustainability audit program increases the likelihood of transparent sustainability reporting.

Initial findings indicate that the majority of companies (77 percent) who reported the use of conflict minerals have reason to believe they originate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country.