Corporate Social Responsibility due diligence among European companies: The results of an interventionist research project with accountability and political implications

Abstract

For decades, companies found in international protocols and standards an alternative source of normative guidance to operatively implement sustainability policies at an organisational level. The ever-increasing adoption of these multi-faceted policies and guidelines co-occurs with a more proactive and voluntaristic attitude towards CSR implementation by companies. Born as a kind of soft corporate law to reinforce a regulatory answer to sustainability issues, today, CSR due diligence is becoming a central pillar of the transition of the economic system towards a great level of sustainable development. The paper presents the results of an interventionist research carried out by researchers in collaboration with the European Parliament, aimed at developing a normative resolution on the prominent role of CSR due diligence and its accountability. Through the exploration of the different state-of-the-art of European companies on CSR due diligence, findings suggest that there is considerable room for improvement in CSR due diligence that can be reached through a normative intervention. In addition, the paper contributes to the development of the literature on interventionist research carried out by business scholars, focusing on academiaindustry-institutions relations.

Environmental, social and governance, corporate social responsibility, and stock returns: What are the short‐ and long‐Run relationships?

“…Like ESG, corporate social responsibility (CSR) with a more established history is also seen as an important factor affecting corporates' market value and financial performance (Lins et al, 2017;Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006). At a time when low-carbon (Wang, Feng, et al, 2022;, sustainability (Zheng et al, 2021) and energy efficiency (Chen et al, 2019) are being valued, increasingly investors and analysts favor ESG as the main tool for analyzing the market value and financial performance of corporates (Camoletto et al, 2022;Darnall et al, 2022).…”

“…Like ESG, corporate social responsibility (CSR) with a more established history is also seen as an important factor affecting corporates' market value and financial performance (Lins et al, 2017; Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006). At a time when low‐carbon (Wang, Feng, et al, 2022; Wang, Wang et al, 2022), sustainability (Zheng et al, 2021) and energy efficiency (Chen et al, 2019) are being valued, increasingly investors and analysts favor ESG as the main tool for analyzing the market value and financial performance of corporates (Camoletto et al, 2022; Darnall et al, 2022). However, some researchers argue that ESG and CSR have different impacts on corporates' financial accounting indicators, financing constraints, and governance characteristics, and most of these impacts are directly reflected by corporates' market performance (Buallay, 2019; Friede et al, 2015).…”

Green finance instruments: Exploring minibonds issuance in Italy

“…Several scholars are addressing the issues of how to remedy climate change and generally improve sociality by acting on corporate accountability (see, e.g., Camoletto et al, 2022). In the same perspective, some authors illustrate how sustainable decisions can also be the most profitable ones (see, e.g., Dutta et al, 2012).…”

Challenges to corporate social responsibility adoption for sustainability: A picture fuzzy approach

“…Moreover, companies with lower levels of CSR were positively affected by CSR directives and started increasing their levels of engagement, which significantly decreased the motivation of companies to "greenwash" (Fiechter et al, 2022). Recommendations were created to support "honest entrepreneurs," encouraging their risk management and their involvement in common corporate culture (Camoletto et al, 2022). The European Commission is leading the transition process of the European economic system firmly toward sustainability.…”

“…These subsections also include day-to-day operations. According to Camoletto et al (2022), these operations include environmental sustainability, transparency and workplace issues, government audits, corporate governance and activism, strategic philanthropy, and stakeholder relations (Martin-Rios et al, 2021). Stakeholder relations can be divided into internal and external categories.…”