Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly ubiquitous, but firms differ in their emphasis on conforming to industry CSR norms versus using CSR strategically to differentiate from competitors. Research explains that managers attempt to balance conformity and differentiation regarding CSR but does not explain what shifts this balance. We draw from optimal distinctiveness research to explain how different types of uncertainty created by industry task environments shift the balance between conforming to industry CSR norms and pursuing differentiated CSR activities. Using variance decomposition on a 9-year panel of 3,184 firms from 357 industries in the United States, we find that managers emphasize normative (strategic) CSR to a greater (lesser) extent in low-munificence and high-complexity task environments, where uncertainty drives managers toward the security of established industry CSR norms, and to a lesser (greater) extent in high-dynamism task environments, where following uncertain CSR norms is less attractive. We also find that the influence of uncertainty created by industry task environments has, on balance, remained constant as business norms shifted from shareholder to stakeholder primacy. Our theoretical framework reveals task environmental uncertainty as an antecedent to how managers attempt to achieve optimal distinctiveness regarding CSR and explains how different sources of uncertainty shape these attempts.

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This paper summarizes and analyzes research on the economic impact of United States fiscal and monetary policy in the wake of the 9/11-terrorist attacks. Therein, it attempts to connect this tragedy to the financial crisis of the late2000s, which is still not fully understood. The large number of factors identified by numerous experts as the causes for the collapse of the financial system makes the crisis a difficult topic to study. This analysis provides a stepping-stone for any further research in that it helps explain how the factors that led to the crisis were created in the first place. Expert opinions, academic studies, as well as both a Cobb-Douglas production function and one of the newest specifications of the Taylor Rule are looked at throughout this paper. While the latter model shows how monetary policy should have been determined throughout the 2000s, the former helps to analyze the impact of fiscal policy after 9/11 on monetary policy. Based on the research and analysis presented in this paper, we can conclude that the factors that caused the collapse of the financial system were largely impacted by government spending in response to the terrorist attacks and monetary policy between 2001 and 2008. This conclusion implies that the crisis could have been minimized if not prevented altogether.

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