Michael Blanding recently posted an article on the Harvard Business School – Working Knowledge website about new research by George Serafeim of Harvard Business School and Ioannis Ioannou of London Business School that demonstrates that mandatory CSR reporting works on several different levels and offers a model in which to measure it. Here is the link to the article: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6701.html
The article itself has a link to the working paper.
Some key points from the executive summary:
- “In the past 10 years, corporate investors have shown an increasing interest in the social responsibility of the companies whose stocks they pick.”
- “The researchers compared 16 countries that required sustainability reporting with a sample of 42 countries that didn’t. Using several measures, they found that the social responsibility of business leaders and managerial credibility increased in those countries with reporting mandates.”
- “The data provide the first concrete evidence that mandating social responsibility reporting actually makes a positive difference.”
