Integrated approaches for business sustainability: The perspective of corporate social responsibility

Although many companies are aware of the importance of sustainability and CSR, they still focus on profits without considering sustainable development. This study explores the relationships among corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate reputation (CR) and corporate financial performance (CFP), by testing the mediating effect of CFP and constructing an integrated sustainability model based on the CSR perspective and stakeholder theory. Although many recent studies have investigated CSR using structural equation modeling to test the relationships among the three variables, measuring this mediation effect is quite rare in the literature. We use Reputation Institute as a secondary data source of CSR and CR and collect data for the period 2011-2017 on 39 companies in 15 countries (i.e., 273 observations). Firm size, sales growth rate, interest coverage ratio, age and industry are the control variables. Our results show that CR positively affects CFP and CSR. Furthermore, we find integrated approaches for business sustainability, revealing that CFP enhances CSR and also that it has a mediating effect on the relationship between CR and CSR.