Highlights Firms with higher R&D intensity tend to be corporate social responsibility (CSR) specialists. High-discretion slack resources allow R&D-intensive firms to be more balanced in their CSR. The R&D intensity–CSR specialization relationship varies across industry characteristics. A natural experiment indicates that R&D intensity influences CSR specialization, rather than vice versa.

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Can bad news also be good news? In this study, I explicate why bad news about firms’ corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) can be good news for firms. Specifically, I address the role of negative media coverage of CSiR in firms’ corporate social performance (CSP). Drawing on signaling theory, I propose that negative media coverage of CSiR is a form of costly yet effective external feedback to firms’ current social signaling. It, therefore, propels firms to undertake organizational changes to send positive response signals through improved CSP. Furthermore, I argue that this effect is augmented by organizational innovation search, which influences firms’ learning capacity required to improve firms’ CSP. Using a multicountry sample of 1,049 firms between 2007 and 2016, I find that negative media coverage of CSiR induces firms to enhance CSP, and this effect is moderated by organizational innovation search.

To mitigate risk, should companies signal a broad range of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives or instead focus on only a few ESG issues? Drawing on signaling theory, we propose that a broad array of ESG initiatives generates not only signal consistency but also accelerating signal costs. Our empirical results support the resultant hypothesis of a curvilinear relationship between ESG scope and equity risk. In addition, this U-shaped curve seems to become steeper when firms face multiple media-reported ESG controversies. Overall, our study qualifies the conventional wisdom that firms can reduce equity risk by attending to a wide variety of stakeholders and highlights the moderating (signal-amplifying) impact of the firm’s media environment.