European Research Studies,

Volume XIII, Issue (4), 2010

Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:

An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies

Theofanis Karagiorgos1

Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to explore the relationship of CSR and firms’ financial
performance in Greek firms. Based on stakeholder theory and mainly on the theory of “good
management”, we try to find out if an improvement in CSR actions results in higher stock
returns. Our empirical analysis will test whether there is an impact of CSR performance on
stock returns, using voluntary disclosures, based on a sample of Greek listed companies. The
findings show that there is a positive correlation among stock returns and CSR performance
in Greek companies. In operational level, these results aim at persuading managers to
implement CSR actions in a greater extent in order to enhance firm market efficiency.

JEL Classification: C14, C23

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Financial Performance, Stock Returns,
Stakeholders, Reporting, Greece

1. Introduction

The definition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an issue that

dominates the existing literature. Many authors made an attempt to approach this
term with many views. Davis (1973, pp.312-313) defined CSR as “the firm’s
considerations of, and response to, issues beyond the narrow economic, technical,
and legal requirements of the firm to accomplish social benefits along with the
traditional economic gains which the firm seeks”. The World Business Council for
Sustainable Development (1999) suggests that: ‘‘CSR is the continuing commitment
by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while
improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the
local community and society at large’’. There is also a disagreement on the
definition of CSR among those that face CSR as an ethical attitude and those who
argue that it is a firm’s strategy (Wan-Jan, 2006). Stainer (2006, pp.253) states that
“CSR concept is to show that ethical principles, from wherever derived, can improve
1
Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia,
Egnatias 156, 540 06, Thessaloniki, Greece, Phone: +302310891596, Fax: +302310891602,
E-mail: [email protected]
86 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

reasoning and harmonize decisions, especially in complex situations and thus,

enhance performance”. The unclear state of CSR definition is recognized also by
Dahlsrud (2008).
It has become a necessity for companies to deal with issues that concern all
kinds of stakeholders, either internal or market-related. This need is depicted by
Isaksson and Steimle (2009, pp.170), who face CSR as the “company’s commitment
to behave socially and environmentally responsible while striving for its economic
goals”. Because of the tight relationship and stakeholders’ demands, Lo (2009)
refers to the existing hope in modern society that stakeholders will stop forcing
managers to lead their firm in long-term social responsibility and try only to achieve
low costs in short time periods.
However, a CSR action ought to be correlated with the financial state and
outcomes of firms. Therefore, many studies were concentrated on the link between
CSR and economic or financial firms’ performance. CSR actions and economic state
are faced either as competitive or complementary issues by many authors (Godfrey
and Hatch, 2007). The latter view is supported by Friedman (1970), who pointed out
that the only social responsibility of a firm is to maximize its profits, as to stay in the
game of market without deception or fraud. However, CSR activities are being
examined by company’s stakeholders. CSR will be evaluated by the market in
relation with strategy, cash flows and reputation. Stock markets will not value
positively charitable and unpublicized contributions by a firm unless they have
impact on firm’s reputation (Van Dijken, 2007). On the contrary, CSR
implementation can provide opportunities to a firm and lead to added value (Cramer,
2003). In the research of Holmes (1976) improved reputation and enhancement of
social community are the most expected positive results while the decrease of short-
run profitability and conflict among social and financial goals are the possible
negative outcomes in the view of executives.
A CSR study “can arguably be seen implicitly as a proxy for stakeholder
studies” (Cummings and Patel, 2009, pp.23). Stakeholder theory is based on
examination of groups to which a firm reacts responsibly (Moir 2001, pp.20) and
adopted by many authors as the basis for analysis on CSR issues. Freeman (1984,
pp.5) defined a stakeholder as ‘‘any group or individual who can affect or is affected
by the achievement of the firm’s objectives’’. According to Pesqueux and Damak-
Ayadi (2005) and the literature review of Cummings and Patel (2009), stakeholders
could be classified in categories: shareholders, internal stakeholders (employees),
operational partners (customers, suppliers) and social community (state authorities,
non-governmental organizations, civil society). In this specific case, stakeholder
theory can be used as to describe the reasons for which a company may undertake
CSR activities as to gain maximized long-term returns (Samy et al., 2010).
Stakeholders’ pressure made companies to become more sustainable
because of the formers’ influence. Sustainability, which depicts the necessity of
corporations to give importance in issues as human resources and environment as
well as not to destroy resources needed for next generations, becomes a way for
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 87

companies to develop (Isaksson and Steimle, 2009). According to Elkington (2000,

pp.229), a firm is sustainable if it functions according to ‘Triple Bottom Line’
(economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice). TBL approach is
well adopted by many authors in their reviews and researches. In conclusion,
according to Ingley et al., (2010), CSR implies all the proper social, environmental
and economic actions that a firm must incorporate as to satisfy the concerns of
stakeholders and the financial requirements of shareholders.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility and Disclosures

According to Roberts (1992), CSR reporting is a strategic plan in order a

firm manages stakeholder relationships. In other words, we could say that a firm
uses CSR reporting to communicate with its stakeholders. Disclosure on CSR
activities is necessary due to the fact that a firm “owes a duty to the society or has a
social contract”. Concerning the need of communication and verification of social
and environmental issues, different guidelines came out (Reynolds and Yuthas,
2008, pp.48). Isenmann et al., (2007) referred to the increasing rate of CSR reporting
via Internet after the 2001 survey of CSR network. The same authors exhibited the
positive and negative aspects of online reporting. Apart from the worthy side of
internet-based reporting, there is a sceptical view because of its voluntary status and
the existence of various reporting systems.
Corporate disclosures provide a firm the opportunity to spread value
information mainly to financial stakeholders as stock analysts, capital markets and
institutional investors and thereas get evaluated on its financial measures. Despite
the necessity for disclosures on social and environmental issues, there has been a
variety of factors, which may affect either positively or negatively firms to provide
these reports. Firm’s size and the characteristics of industry seem to play the most
important role in the disclosure of environmental issues, according to many studies
(Da Silva Monteiro and Aibar-Guzmán, 2009; Brammer and Pavelin, 2008;
Magness, 2006).
The most widely used guidelines are Global Reporting Initiative (GRI),
founded in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies
(CERES) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). The current
version of the guidelines (GRI-G3) was published in 2006. GRI provides indicators
to companies in order to measure and report their economic, social and
environmental performance (GRI, 2006). GRI guidelines were selected by Adams
(2004) because of their high international profile and influence. Samy et al., (2010)
used the GRI guidelines in their research, pointing out that GRI is an attempt to
overcome possible problems for companies that may occur using other measurement
standards. Moreover their opinion is granted on the perception of WBCSD, which
face GRI as widely acceptable reporting guidelines. GRI guidelines could become a
mean of evaluation for investment decision as shareholders will be able to
understand past performance and future objectives (Willis, 2003). Schadewitz and
88 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

Niskala (2010) shared the opinion that companies may obtain higher stock returns if
they apply GRI guidelines, something that is reassured by their research.
GRI has been an object of research in many studies, either as a measure of
CSR measurement (Panayiotou et al., 2009a) or as a way for qualitative evaluation
of sustainability reporting (Stiller and Daub, 2007; Skouloudis et al, 2009;
Skouloudis et al., 2010; Gallego, 2006; Tagesson et al., 2009; Mio, 2009; Clarkson
et al., 2008; Sutantoputra, 2009). According to all above, GRI reporting can be used
as a tool for research in CSR practices, providing strict guidelines and a wide variety
of issues for evaluation on the economic, social and environmental field. The use of
GRI guidelines as an instrument in order to measure CSR practices is justified by the
research of Gjølberg (2009).

3. Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility

In many studies the measure of CSR is commonly referred as Corporate

Social Performance (CSP). According to Dennis et al., (2008, pp.26), “Corporate
social performance (CSP) describes the proposed relationship between corporate
social responsibility activities and firm-level corporate financial measures”. Our
literature review reveals that many efforts have been done to measure CSR
activities. Waddock and Graves (1997) pointed out the problem of measuring CSP
and identified the unclear relationship between CSR and financial performance.
They noticed and admitted the difficulty that many researches did not construct a
representative CSP measure, focusing on partial areas of CSR and ignoring the rest.
According to the literature review of Wood (2010), CSP has been measured
by using Social reports, Environmental reports, Annual reports of social or
environmental disclosures, Multi-faceted CC measure, KLD ratings, Multi-faceted
CSP measure: Stiller’s Ethical (Performance Scorecard (EPS)), Canadian Social
Investment Database (CSID) ratings, ARESE ratings and Vigeo ratings (Europe).
Soana (2009), in her literature review, pointed out that social performance is
measured in various studies by five different methods: content analysis, surveys
carried out using questionnaires, reputational measures, unidimensional indicators
and ethical ratings.
It is important for the examination of the relationship between CSR and
firm’s performance to have a ‘multiple-indicators, multiple-causes’ (MIMIC) model
because of the multidimensional nature of CSR (Elsayed and Paton, 2005).
Mahoney and Roberts (2007) calculated a composite measure of CSR, based on
community relations, diversity, employee relations, environment, international,
product safety, and other ratings. Brammer et al., (2006) and Fiori et al., (2009)
adopted three parameters of CSR: employment (health and safety, training and
development, equal opportunities policies, equal opportunity systems, employee
relations, systems for job creation and job security), environment (policies,
management systems, and reporting) and community. They also translated each text
ratings into quantitative variables.
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 89

4. Measuring Firm’s Financial Performance

The researches on the existing relationship between corporate social

responsibility (or corporate social performance) and financial performance use a
wide variety of measures of firm financial performance. The great portion of them
measure firm performance either from the accounting or market view. McGuire et
al., (1988) pointed out the problems that may occur, using accounting-based
measures and market-based measures. Accounting measures are “susceptible to
differential accounting procedures and managerial manipulation” and market-based
measures, due to investor’s evaluation, “may not be sufficient”. The advantage of
market-based measures is that “we can estimate the value (or the cost) of companies
adopting certain strategies to be socially responsible, conditional on the existing
information” (Goukasian and Whitney, 2008). The literature review of Fiori et al.,
(2009) reveals that the measurement of firms’ financial performance can be based
on: profitability, liquidity, solvency, financial efficiency and repayment capacity.
Among 95 studies that Margolis and Walsh (2001) reviewed, 49 used accounting
measures, 12 used market measures and the rest used a mixed set. The literature
review of Griffin and Mahon (1997) provide a list with all measures of Corporate
Financial Performance (CFP) used in their examined studies. The results of their
review concluded that the most popular measures are size (logarithm of total assets),
ROA, ROE, asset age and 5-year ROS.
Return On Assets (ROA) was widely used as we observed in the following
studies: Hull and Rothenberg, 2008; Mahoney and Roberts, 2007; Waddock and
Graves, 1997; Lee et al., 2009; D’Arcimoles and Trebucq, 2002; Aras et al., 2010;
Bhagat and Bolton, 2008; Fernandez-Sanchez and Sotorrıo, 2007). According to
Hull and Rothenberg (2008, pp.785), ROA “represents the profitability of the firm
with respect to the total set of resources, or assets, under its control”. Return On
Equity (ROE) was used as an accounting measure in our examining literature
(Mahoney and Roberts, 2007; Waddock and Graves, 1997; Lee et al., 2009;
D’Arcimoles and Trebucq, 2002; Aras et al., 2010). Return On Sales (ROS) is an
accounting measure that was also used widely (Waddock and Graves, 1997; Lee et
al., 2009; Aras et al., 2010). The wide use of Tobin’s q ratio as we found out in our
examining literature (Surroca et al., 2010; Dowell et al., 2000; Bhagat and Bolton,
2008), is justified by its ability to measure long-term investments and is calculated
by dividing the sum of firm equity value, book value of long-term debt, and net
current liabilities by the book value of inventories and property, plant and
equipment.
Stock return is a market-based measure that was mainly used in corporate
financial performance literature (Bhagat and Bolton, 2008; Brammer, et al., 2006).
Herremans et al., (1993) used the return on a company's common stock as risk and
abnormal returns of a company's common stock as stock market return. Jacobs et al.,
(2010) and Lin et al., (2009) used the CAPM model to estimate abnormal returns.
90 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

5. The link between Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm’s Financial

Performance

The examination of relationship between CSR and firm financial

performance has been highly developed and researched in the modern literature. The
link between may be positive, neutral or negative. Based on the summary of findings
in the research of Ullmann (1985), it is easily to find out that the linkage between
CSR and financial performance is unclear. Thus, we can divide researches in three
groups: those which found positive relationship, suggesting that CSR improves
firms’ value, those which found negative relationship, adopting the idea that firm
must use its resources only to maximize its profits and otherwise it will have adverse
results, and those which found neutral relationship, implying that there are many
factors that can prevent researchers from secure results (Kang et al., 2010). Neutral
association can be explained if CSR is perceived as pure marketing strategy
(D’Arcimoles and Trebucq, 2002).
This relationship may have two ways of evaluation. CSR may be linked with
subsequent financial performance as to find out in what degree financial
performance is improved but also it can be linked with past firm performance to
explore if firms with high financial performance take on CSR actions. Waddock and
Graves (1997) based on the theories of “slack resources” and “good management”,
did approved that better financial performance results in improved CSP and
improved CSP leads to improved financial performance. The previous conclusions
are supported also by the research of Surroca et al., (2010). Therefore, a serious
conflict among researchers is whether CSP is independent or dependent variable in
the relationship between CSP and CFP. Based on the research of Margolis and
Walsh (2003), in a total of 127 reviewed studies, CSP has been treated as
independent variable in 109 cases.
The mixed results referred above are consistent with our literature review.
The examination of literature on past and subsequent financial performance shows
conflicting results. Positive association was found in the studies of Wahba (2008),
Hull and Rothenberg (2008), Rettab et al., (2009), and Herremans et al., (1993).
Moreover, Moskowitz (1972) suggested that the high listed companies in terms of
CSR reported higher than average stock returns while Bird et al., (2007), concluded
that firms who engage CSR activities will be rewarded in the market place but
market seem to evaluate more negatively firms which do not include CSR strategy
in their business. Nelling and Webb (2009), using ROA and annual stock return as
dependent variables, found positive and significant relationship with CSR score. The
research of Feldman et al., (1997) revealed that an improvement in environmental
management system and future environmental performance will increase
shareholder wealth by five percent. On contrast, negative relationship was proved in
the study of Wood and Jones (2005). Brammer et al., (2006) found that the overall
CSR measure has significant but negative effect on stock returns. Evaluating each
social performance indicator, they found that the measure of employee performance
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 91

has significant and negative effect on stock returns, community measure has positive
but not significant effect and environment measure has negative and no significance
too. In addition, Vance (1975) found a negative correlation between rankings of
social responsibility and stock market performance. Finally, in the literature review
of Wood and Jones (2005), there is an important finding by other researchers that is
pointed out: Negative impact on abnormal stock returns was noticed after the
announcement of CSR actions in eight out of nine studies. This finding indicates that
market does not recognize CSR efforts but indeed punished them. Mixed results
were observed in the studies of McGuire et al., (1988), and D’Arcimoles and
Trebucq (2002). Neutral relationship (no significance) was found in the studies of
Fauzi (2009), Mahoney and Roberts (2007), Goukasian and Whitney (2008) and
Fogler and Nutt (1975). In the research of Fiori et al., (2009), no significant
correlation was found between stock price and CSR parameters.

6. Corporate Social Responsibility in Greece: An emerging field

Many studies have explored the state of CSR in European countries. Italy,
Spain, United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries have been of great interest in
this field. CSR in Greece has not been of a popular research object in terms of
quantitative characteristics. Although that CSR is generally at an early stage, there
are a lot of Greek companies that make serious efforts as to be socially responsible
and sustainable.
The first who tried to include CSR strategy were companies listed in the
stock market. Due to the fact that the largest number of corporation in Greece is
medium-small companies, the adoption of CSR is getting difficult. Panayiotou et al.,
(2009b) adopted this view after the results of their research. Findings show that there
is a small number of companies which publish CSR reports. Moreover, size of
company and sector seem to play important role in adopting CSR in Greek
companies. Large international companies as well as companies that operate in
financial, telecommunication and petroleum sector are subject to a higher degree of
CSR. Based on a research by National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in
2006, the economic burden, the lack of information and the size of the enterprises
prevent firms from incorporating CSR activities in their strategies (Metaxas and
Tsavdaridou, 2010).
However, a change is observed on ethical standards and that is mainly
caused by the establishment of multinational companies. According to the research
of Kavali et al., (2001), the most influential role of the corporate ethics’
enhancement is government. Existing problems in Greek market are based on issues
as gifts/entertainment, bribery, tax evasion practice, advertising, promotion and
personnel. Multinationals and foreign companies, privatization schemes, high level
of education of professionals and European Union legislation may have positive
impact on ethical standards while low public concern, political corruption and no
stringent legislation drove on low standards. In order to support firms to adopt CSR
92 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

strategy, the Hellenic Network for CSR was founded on 2000 (Hellenic Network for
CSR).
It would be interesting understanding how CSR is perceived by managers in
Greek firms. In the survey of Fafaliou et al., (2006) in Greek shipping companies,
most managers perceive CSR as “health and safety”, “codes of conduct” and
“environmental activities” while the main reasons for the implementation of CSR
activities are the “improvement of employees’ job satisfaction”, “better relations
with community and public authorities”, “improvement of customer loyalty”,
“relations with partners and investors” and “expected economic performance”.
Moreover, “improvement of employees’ job satisfaction”, “improvement of
customer loyalty”, “raise of productivity”, “improved relations with partners and
investors” and “owners’ satisfaction” consist the gains of a CSR action according to
the managers’ perception. Based on the results of the above research, we can
conclude that Greek companies try to be socially responsible and sustainable as to
satisfy their stakeholders and achieve better economic and financial performance.
The study of Bichta (2003) revealed that economic considerations and compliance
with legal requirements are the main factors for Greek firms in order to be
environmentally responsible. As a result, Greek firms seem to pay attention to a
wide range of stakeholders in order to succeed a positive evaluation based on their
CSR activities. One of the most important categories of stakeholders, during a
difficult period of financial situation, is shareholders, who can evaluate a company
from the market view.
Because of the fact that companies can communicate with their stakeholders
through World Wide Web, Greek companies have started to disclose their CSR
practices in their websites. However, the number of companies which do CSR
reporting under proper and certain guidelines is significant smaller in comparison
with the total number of companies which apply CSR policies. This is due to the fact
that the largest number of Greek companies is medium-small sized. Guidelines as
GRI and Sustainability Integrated Guidelines for Management are difficult to be
adopted by small and medium-sized corporations because of their complexity and
limited flexibility (Perrini and Tencati, 2006). A research in voluntary disclosure of
social responsibility among companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange showed
that size is a significant positive factor (Leventis and Weetman, 2004). Nevertheless,
GRI guidelines can be the prevailing framework for Greek companies (Panayiotou
et al., 2009c).
Nowadays, there is a noticeable turn on CSR issues by a satisfying number
of companies, as to achieve a greater market share, communicating their actions to a
wide range of customers. The trend of environmental issues and green economy,
which is constantly rising, forced many companies to incorporate CSR actions in
their strategies. In this difficult financial period, firms try to improve their position
in the CSR field, despite the fact that all variable costs are subjected to specific
limitations, because of the decrease of their profitability.
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 93

The case of Greece seems to be interesting and of great interest to get

researched. The reason is that in a country which does not has a CSR history in
business world and in spite of the serious costs that a company has to deal with if it
incorporates a CSR strategy, Greek companies present an overwhelming try to be
social and environmental responsible. But which are the benefits of these practices
in financial terms? Is there any positive evaluation by their shareholders? Can stock
market recognize the effort of companies to be sustainable despite the fact CSR in
Greece is at an emerging state?

7. Methodology

7.1 Hypothesis
Stakeholder theory is the basis in order to examine how stock market reacts
if Greek companies undertake CSR practices. Shareholders are important
stakeholders for the financial survival of a firm. Many researches have been
undergone in order to reach a conclusion about whether there is a positive or
negative effect. The above literature review proved that the relationship between
CSR and firm’s performance is not clear. Based on our review and other authors’
review (Griffin and Mahon, 1997; Margolis and Walsh, 2003), we understand that
the largest portion of studies show a positive relationship. According to the theory of
“good management” (Waddock and Graves, 1997), we make the next hypothesis
that we are going to examine:

H1: Better CSP leads to higher financial performance

This hypothesis must include some control variables. Based on the above
theory and the model of Callan and Thomas (2009), our theoretical model will be:

CFPi = f(CSPi , X) (1)

where,
CFPi is a measure of firm’s financial performance,
CSPi is a measure of firm’s socially responsible performance,
X is a vector of control variables, which includes firm’s financial characteristics

Moreover we have to point out that we introduce a one-year lag between

dependent and independent variables (Elsayed and Paton, 2005; Brammer and
Pavelin, 2008; Mahoney and Roberts, 2007; Rodrıguez and Cruz, 2007; Nelling and
Webb, 2009).
94 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

7.2 Measuring financial performance

The dependent variable in this study is stock return as to measure the market
value that companies gain or lose implementing CSR activities. As was mentioned
in our literature review, measures of financial performance could be either
accounting-based or market based. There are a lot of studies that used stock return as
measure of financial performance (Nelling and Webb, 2009; Bhagat and Bolton,
2008; Brammer et al., 2006). Stock return is calculated as (Omran and Ragab, 2004;
Brammer and Millington, 2008):
Pi t - Pit-1 + D it
SRi =
Pit-1

where,
Pit is the price of stock i at time t,
Pit-1 is the price of stock i at time t-1, and
Dit is the dividends received between the period t-1 and t for the firm i

7.3 Measuring corporate social responsibility

In order to measure CSR, because of the lack of data availability in Greek
companies, we use the method of content analysis on CSR annual reports. So far, we
have to point out that there are a lot of Greek companies, listed on Athens Stock
Exchange, which undertake CSR activities but neither have disclosed them in annual
reports nor have they disclosed them in reports under certified guidelines. This
problem is also indicated by Panayiotou et al. (2009c), who support that some of
Greek firms may present only their strengths and cover their weaknesses as most of
them decide themselves what to report. As a result, and for the reasons of accuracy
and reliability of data, as our main instrument of research, we choose annual reports
under specific certified guidelines. Content analysis is defined as “a systematic,
replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content
categories based on explicit rules of coding” (Montabon et al., 2007, pp.1002). This
method was used by many authors in their studies (Montabon et al., 2007; Khan,
2010; Aras et al., 2010; Rolland and Bazzoni, 2009). According to Cochran and
Wood (1984), content analysis is an objective procedure. We choose GRI as
reporting guidelines in order to achieve greater reliability and accuracy. As we
reffered previously, companies may obtain higher stock returns if they apply GRI
guidelines (Schadewitz and Niskala, 2010). Moreover, GRI guidelines have been
used by a lot of researches, something that indicates GRI’s great acceptance. Based
on GRI reports according to G3 guidelines, we tried to create a CSR index. Using
the rating systems of Sutantoputra (2009) on social performance and Clarkson, et al.,
(2008) on environmental performance which were developed based on GRI
reporting, we evaluate firms’ CSR performance. Social performance was evaluated
by 16 indicators on policies and systems on social issues (Table 1). Environmental
performance was evaluated by 10 indicators (Table 2). In order to achieve a proper
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 95

scale score for our research, we followed the studies of Graves and Waddock (1994)
and Fiori et al., (2009). All the above indicators were rated on a scale from 0 to 3.
When a company does not take into account the specific indicator at all, it is rated
with 0. A company is ranked with 1 or 2 depending on the broadness of the
description (e.g. 1 if the company only names the indicator and 2 if there is a very
poor description (e.g. if the company only names the variable without any or with an
unclear description). The company is rated with 3 if it takes the indicator into
consideration with a satisfying description. So, a total score for social performance
could reach the maximum score of 48 and for environmental performance the score
of 30. A compound CSR score for our analysis is created adding both score, giving a
maximum of score of 78 for each company.

Table 1: List of social performance indicators

Employment Strategy and Community Respect for

information management privacy
Labour practices and decent work

Labour/management Non- Bribery and Products and

relations discrimination corruption services

Product responsibility
Human rights

Health and safety Child labour Political Customer

Society

contributions health and

Training and Freedom of
safety
education association and
collective
bargaining

Diversity and Forced and

opportunity compulsory

Table 2: List of environmental performance indicators

Energy use Toxics release Green house gas Environmental Compliance

efficiency inventory emissions impacts of products performance
and services

Water use Other discharges Other air emissions Land and resources Waste generation
efficiency use-biodiversity- and management
conservation
96 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

7.4 Control variables

Based on our literature review, it is suggested that firm performance and
CSR are affected by several factors. Waddock and Graves (1997) used firm size
(total sales, total assets and number of employees), risk (long-term debt to total
assets ratio) and industry as control variables. Size seems to play important role
because, due to some evidence, small companies cannot adopt CSR activities in the
same extent as large can do so. Brammer et al., 2006 used market capitalisation as to
control form firms’ size. Risk may have significant impact on firm’s attitude against
CSR because of savings, costs and market. Aras et al., (2010), Wahba (2008),
Nelling and Webb (2009) and, D’Arcimoles and Trebucq (2002) used also the debt
to total assets ratio to control for the riskiness of firm. Brammer et al., (2006) and
Surroca et al., (2010) used firm’s CAPM beta as to control for firm’s risk.
Furthermore, the kind of industry and its characteristics may create problems in
exploring CSR actions (Waddock and Graves, 1997; Wahba, 2008). Moreover,
because of the use of stock returns as dependent variable, Brammer et al., (2006)
used also the previous year’s returns based on their review, adopting the idea that if
a company do well over one year period, it will keep up its performance in short
term. In our model, having stock returns as measure of financial performance, we
used market capitalisation (CAP) to control for firm’s size, CAPM beta (BETA) to
control for stock’s risk (systematic risk) and previous years’ returns (SR).

7.5 Sample
The initial sample of research was constituted by all the companies that are
listed on the Athens Stock Exchange. The total number at the time we accessed the
website of stock market (www.ase.gr, Accessed: 05/05/2010) was 281. After
accessing their websites in order to get CSR reports based on GRI guidelines for two
years, our sample is constituted by 39 companies. Our sample is quite representative
due to the fact that our companies are part of great range in market capitalization and
belong to different industry sectors. We preferred to include in our sample only
companies which disclosed CSR reports for two years instead of companies which
reported CSR information for one year only, although that in this case we would
achieve a larger sample. The reason is that a shareholder could evaluate properly a
company who implement CSR activities annually and in such case we prefer to
include companies who tend to show significant progress throughout these two years
examined.

7.6 Data
In order to evaluate CSR, we accessed firms’ CSR reports based on GRI
guidelines for two years (2007 and 2008). Data for stock returns (prices and
dividends) were obtained by Athens Stock Exchange (2007, 2008 and 2009). The
source of data in order to calculate the rest financial variables (2007 and 2008) is
Athens Stock Exchange and Hellastat.
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 97

7.7 Model
According to the above hypothesis and the selection of measures for
dependent and independent variables, our econometric model (t=2008 and 2009) is:

SR t  b0 + b1 CSRscore t-1  b 2 CAPt-1 + b3 BETA t-1 + b 4 SR t-1 + u t

where,
SRt is the stock return for the year t
CSRscoret-1 is the index for CSR for the year t-1
CAPt-1 is the market capitalisation for the year t-1
BETAt-1 is the CAPM beta for the year t-1
SRt-1 is the stock return for the year t-1
ut is a disturbance term

8. Results

8.1 Descriptive statistics

First of all, we are going to present the descriptive statistics for the variables
of our model. Observing Table 3 from a qualitative view, the results show an
increasing adoption of CSR actions by Greek companies. The mean of CSRscore
has risen from 44.00 in 2007 to 53.77 in 2008. Furthermore, stock returns appear to
have a significant increase during the two-year period. Specifically, during the year
of 2008, negative returns (-0.593) are observed in this portfolio while positive ones
are observed (0.276) in the year 2009. Table 4 presents summary statistics for our
measures of financial performance, CSRscore and control variables. The variable SR
ranges from -0.766 to 0.700. The minimum of CSRscore is 30 with a maximum
value of 72 and a mean of 48.8846. Moreover, the wide range of CAP indicates that
the size of sample companies varies in a great extent. Statistics are provided also for
the ratio of CAPM beta (BETA) and stock returns of previous year. The mean of
BETA, which almost gets the value of zero, shows that our stocks have no risk, their
returns move regardless of market.

Table 3: Descriptive Statistics for CSRscore and StockReturn

SR_09 SR_08 CSRscore_08 CSRscore_07

Mean 0,275579 -0,593246 53,7692 44,00

Std. Deviation 0,31429 0,15218 9,64491 7,34847
Minimum -0,3459 -0,7665 36,00 30,00
Maximum 0,7003 -0,2983 72,00 57,00
98 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

Table 4: Descriptive Statistics for all model’s variables

SR t CSRscore t-1 CAP t-1 BETA t-1 SRt-1

Mean -0,158833 48,8846 5.121.293.628,68 0,004231 -0,303193

Std. Deviation 0,5013384 9,83498 4.946.857.588,20 0,0065441 0,3141883

Minimum -0,7665 30,00 20.147.976,05 -0,0120 -0,7665

Maximum 0,7003 72,00 18.464.223.716,00 0,0270 0,1336

8.2 Correlation matrix and bivariate results

Table 5 presents the correlation matrix for the dependent and continuous
independent variables. As can be seen, there is a very significant and positive
relationship between SR and CSRscore (0.550) at p<0.01 two-tailed. This shows that
CSR performance has a strong effect on stock returns. Moreover, there is an also
strongly negative significance correlation between stock returns and market
capitalisation (CAP) and between stock returns and stock returns of previous year,
while no significant correlation was found between SR and and BETA. The idea that
a stock which has a good performance in a specific time period, will continue to do
so in short term, is inconsistent with our research’s results. However, CSRscore is
negative correlated with SR of previous year (-0.455) at p<0.01 two-tailed and not
significantly correlated with CAP and BETA. It is interesting to point out that
despite the fact that there is no significance, market capitalization is positive
correlated with CSR, which indicates that larger firms achieve higher CSR
performance, as it is noticed in the literature review. Systematic risk (BETA) is not
correlated significantly with any other variable but it is noticeable that has a
negative relationship with CSR, which depicts that if a stock is inversely correlated
with the market (negative values of beta), then the firm will expend more money for
CSR actions.
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 99

Table 5: Pearson Correlations Matrix

SR t CSRscore t-1 CAP t-1 BETA t-1 SRt-1

SRt Pearson Correlation 1 0,550(**) -0,289(*) 0,062 -0,825(**)

Sig. (2-tailed) 0,000 0,010 0,588 0,000

N 78 78 78 78 78

CSRscoret-1 Pearson Correlation 0,550(**) 1 0.020 -0,074 -0,455(**)

Sig. (2-tailed) 0,000 0,865 0,521 0,000

N 78 78 78 78 78

CAP t-1 Pearson Correlation -0,289(*) 0.020 1 0,115 0,110

Sig. (2-tailed) 0,010 0,865 0,317 0,337

N 78 78 78 78 78

BETA t-1 Pearson Correlation 0,062 -0,074 0,115 1 -0,011

Sig. (2-tailed) 0,588 0,521 0,317 0,922

N 78 78 78 78 78

SR t-1 Pearson Correlation -0,825(**) -0,455(**) 0,110 -0,011 1

Sig. (2-tailed) 0,000 0,000 0,337 0,922

N 78 78 78 78 78

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

8.3 Regression Analysis

To test the multivariate relationship between firm performance and
corporate social responsibility, we also conducted regression analysis. Assessing the
following matrix, we have to keep in mind that there is one year lag among the data
of dependent (2009 and 2008) and independent variables (2008 and 2007). Useful
conclusions can be extracted form the Tables 6 and 7 about our econometric model.
The multiple correlation coefficient (R), using all predictors simultaneously, is
0.881. The model explains about 77 percent (R2= 0.776) of the variation on stock
returns ranking. Moreover, the Standard Error of the Estimate is 0,2438572 which is
lower than the standard deviation of SR, as it has to be. The model appears to be
100 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

statistically significant (p=0.000) and so, the independent variables predict

significantly the dependent variable.

Table 6: Model Summary

Adjusted Std. Error

R R Square R Square of the Estimate Durbin-Watson

0,881 0,776 0,763 0,2438572 2,248

Table 7: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Sum of

Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Regression 15,012 4 3,753 63,112 0,000

Residual 4,341 73 0,059

Total 19,353 77

Table 8 presents the main results of OLS regression. The constant term is
statistically significant and negative (-1.027). We found out that the coefficient of
CSRscore is positive (b1=0.013) and significant at the 1% level (p=0.003). This
result confirms our main hypothesis and is consistent with the largest portion of
studies in the literature that found out a positive relationship between CSR and
financial performance and specifically between CSR and stock returns (Moskowitz,
1972; Nelling and Webb, 2009). The significance of the rest of control variables is
consistent with the previous results of Pearson correlations. The coefficient of
market capitalization is negative and significant (p=0.000). The coefficient of BETA
is positive but not significant. Furthermore, the other control variable, SR of
previous year appears to have negative and too significant relationship with SR
(p=0.000).
Tests for normality of residuals and homoskedasticity of data were done and
no serious problems were indicated. Also absence of autocorrelation is indicated as
the value of Derbin-Watson (Table VI) is 2.248. We investigated multicollinearity
problems by examing variance inflation factors (VIFs). According to Katos (2004),
if VIF of a variable exceeds ten, then this variable is collinear to the others.
Observing the VIFs for the three independent variables in the Table VI, we can
 Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance:
An Empirical Analysis on Greek Companies 101

conclude that it is unlikely that multicollinearity influence our regression results,

since the range of VIFs is varied from 1.024 to 1.290. This conclusion is also
supported by the coefficients of tolerance.

Table 8: Regression Results

Unstandardized Standardized Collinearity

Coefficients Coefficients t Sig. Statistics

B Std.

Error Beta Tolerance VIF

Constant -1,027 0,151 -6,817 0,000

CSRscoret-1 0,013 0,003 0,250 3,989 0,000 0,780 1,282

CAP t-1 -2,33E-011 0,000 -0,230 -4,076 0,000 0,967 1,035

BETA t-1 7,713 4,354 0,099 1,771 0,081 0,977 1,024

SR t-1 -1,093 0,100 -0,685 -10,879 0,000 0,775 1,290

9. Conclusion, implications and further research

Our study is an attempt to explore the relationship of CSR and firms’

financial performance in Greek firms. Based on stakeholder theory and mainly on
the theory of “good management”, we try to find out if an improvement in CSR
actions results in higher stock returns. The evaluation of CSR performance is held
using the method of content analysis of sustainability reports according to GRI
guidelines and performance indicators. A compound CSRscore is so generated and
constitutes our main independent variable. Control variables (market capitalization
for controlling size, CAPM beta for controlling risk and stock return of previous
year) are added in our model. Data are obtained for two-year period using one year
lag. The results of our research are consistent with the larger portion of studies. A
positive and significant relationship among stock returns and CSR is found. Our
econometric model appears to be statistically significant and its results show that a
company which adopts CSR strategy could be evaluated positively by the market
and its stakeholders. This result interprets that a Greek company which adopts CSR
strategy and practices may obtain higher stock values due to the fact that
stakeholders (shareholders) evaluate positively these activities. This generalisation is
based on the fact that our sample companies are of a wide variety on market
capitalization and that they represent different kinds of industry.
102 European Research Studies, Vol XIII, Issue (4), 2010

The method of measuring CSR on a specific kind of CSR reporting is

something to confront in order to achieve even more objective results. We suggest
another way of measuring CSR or the use of content analysis in websites reporting
in a larger sample, achieving greater reliability. Accounting-based variables could be
used instead of stock returns. Finally, a wider time period of analysis could provide
more secure results.
This study compiles a prime effort to set some standards on the relation
between corporate social responsibility and firm performance especially given the
fact that this market constitutes a “Greek labyrinth” for those involved in gathering
as well as evaluating the CSR data. This research hides the academic ambition to be
used as a guide for further examination and research on the relationship between
CSR and Greek companies. Last but not least, in operational level, these results aim
at persuading managers to implement CSR actions in a greater extent to enhance
firm market efficiency and at a larger outcome scale to improve the CSR state in
Greece. In spite of the costs that may occur, adopting CSR strategy, companies may
obtain higher stock returns and satisfy the needs of their stakeholders.

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