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Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure and business responsibility report (BRR) on a firm’s financial performance. Additionally, the study explores whether CSR expenditure and firm performance are related linearly or otherwise. The study also assesses the influence of mandating CSR expenditure on a firm’s performance. Design/methodology/approach The study is set in India and uses a nine-year data set from 165 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Data compilation and analysis are done by using content analysis and panel data regressions. Findings The main findings of the study are that the effect of CSR expenditure on firm performance in India is non-linear and can be characterized as parabolic for investigated firms. While some performance indicators suggest a U-shaped relationship, others show an inverted U-type pattern, making a definitive conclusion elusive in either direction. BRR scores themselves have a positive impact on firm performance. Mandatory CSR expenditure affects the financial performance negatively, but the market performance improves in general. Originality/value The study provides new insights on the relationship between CSR expenditure, BRR scores and firm performance from India, which is not only a notable emerging market but also has other gripping characteristics. It has a prolific history of philanthropy, and yet, it is the first country in the world to mandate CSR expenditure in recent times. The equation between reported economic progress and general quality of life remains intriguing, and yet the number of studies on the effects of CSR expenditure on firm performance are no match to the volume of ongoing and completed works in more developed markets. This study attempts to trim the gap and provide some useful insights for managers, policymakers and stakeholders, apart from prompting further research.

Abstract-ommunication medium has changed dramatically in the past decade after the emergence of social media. . Not only it became top priority for business houses now a day but other organizations including education institutes are using social media to connect with students. With approximately 462 million internet users and over 241 million active Facebook users; Internet penetration, Smartphone's, youth exposure are major factors which are responsible for high growth rate of internet and social website users. Decision makers are consistently trying to identify ways through which firms can make use of social media applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. It is a place where people discuss politics, products, cricket, music & movies, fashion, science & Technology and many other issues. This new media has led to a paradigm shift in marketing practices of many companies from a traditional brand or product-driven approach to a contemporary customer-driven approach. Social Media and its technology are consumer-driven as it can directly communicate with consumers for their product and services. Moreover, this new form of media is often perceived more trustworthy source rather than sponsored content transmitted thru the traditional media of the promotion mix. Though organizations cannot control the direction of information disseminated through social media yet social media is being widely used by almost all the companies, in spite of their size or structure. Consumers get instant response and feel more attached with the organization. Considering all these benefits educational institutes and universities are now using social media to reach its perspective clients i.e. students, in order to improve recruitments. Social media sites are generally accessed by youth of specific demographic profile. There is big difference in how and why people use social networking sites. In addition, how much is the involvement and continuation of traditional marketing practices required in social media marketing. Unfortunately, universities/institutes using these technologies often fail to understand the unique opportunities and challenges that accompany the adoption of social media. In this paper, an effort has been made on conceptual approach in identifying issues and challenges in identifying role of social media in higher education and to identify factors that affect the selection of higher educational institutes and role of social media in reaching to the perspective students. The data will be analyzed using statistical techniques like factor or confirmatory factor analysis with reliability and validation checks.

PurposeIncreasing focus on socially responsible investments (SRIs) and green projects in recent times, coupled with the arrival of COVID pandemic, are the main drivers of this study. The authors conduct a post-factum analysis of investor choice between sin and green investments before and through the COVID outbreak.Design/methodology/approachA passive investor is introduced who seeks maximum risk-adjusted return and/or investment variance. When presented an opportunity to add sin and/or green investments to her initial one-asset market-only investment position, she views and handles this issue as a portfolio problem (MPT). She estimates value-at-risk (VaR) and conditional-value-at-risk (CVaR) for portfolios to account for downside risk.FindingsGreen investments offer better overall risk-return optimization in spite of major inter-period differences in return-risk dynamics and substantial downside risk. Portfolios optimized for minimum variance perform just as well as the ones optimized for minimum downside risk. Return and risk have settled at higher levels since the onset of COVID, resulting in shifting the efficient frontier towards north-east in the return-risk space.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature in two ways: One, it examines investor choice between sin and green investments during a global health emergency and views this choice against the one made during normal times. Two, instead of using the principles of modern portfolio theory (MPT) explicitly for diversification, the study uses them to identify investor preference for one over the other investment type. This has not been widely done thus far.

We examine the impact of operating efficiency on firm valuation. The study spans ninety firms spread over six major industrial sectors in India from 2005 through 2012. Six key ratios are considered for their possible impact on the enterprise value. Through panel data analysis, we find that gross profits, return on capital employed asset turnover and to some degree, sales have a significant impact on the enterprise value at the inter-industry level. In the collective sample, all six ratios pertaining to operating efficiency and profitability have a significant effect on enterprise value. We also note that with the infrastructure sector as the reference point, the role of banking sector is significantly positive in value creation. Further, value creation is more attendant to present performance rather than what might have happened in the past. Keywords: Operating efficiency, Panel Data Analysis, EV/EBITDA, Enterprise Value, Firm Value 1.IntroductionFirms continuously try to scout and opt for opportunities of achieving competitive advantage in an increasingly complex and competitive environment through organic and inorganic growth. Since it is sometimes considered a faster way to grow, corporate restructuring (inorganic growth) has emerged as a popular strategy among big and medium size corporate houses. The importance of a firm's valuation in this context cannot be overstated, for it establishes the price of a target firm, which, if not determined correctly, would lead to a loss to the acquiring or the target firm.Our goal in this paper is to see how a firm's operating efficiency affects its value. Seetharaman and Raj (2011) report a strong positive correlation between EPS and the stock price of Public Bank Barhad, a listed bank in Malaysia. We, however, avoid conventional measures like Earnings-per-Share (EPS) and Price-to-earnings (P/E) because when the total income of a firm is derived primarily from non-operating sources, the reality about a firm's operational efficiency may be obscured, if not hidden altogether. Naik (2007) had also considered variables like operating profit and expenses in his study on the operating efficiency of banks.Jin and Jin (2008) report a positive correlation between operating performance and stock price change among the top 10% performers on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in the first two years of research period but in the latter period of two years, operating performance is inversely proportional to stock price change. Their principal finding is that operating performance generally declined as the stock prices went up. Similarly, Kirkwood and Nahm (2006) report that changes in firm efficiency are reflected in stock returns. Beccalli, Casu and Girardone, (2006) also find that changes in efficiency are reflected in changes in stock prices and that the stocks of cost efficient banks tend to outperform their inefficient counterparts. Earlier, Chu and Lim (1998) had also found that percentage changes in the prices of the bank shares reflect percentage changes in profit.In this p...