Corporate philanthropy and corporate social irresponsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from China

Purpose This study aims to investigate the perspective of corporate philanthropy during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China for firms with various levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, the study appraises the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock returns and sustainable development of Chinese-listed companies and determines the likelihood of paying donations vis-a-vis firm reputation.Design/methodology/approach The study used data from 117 Chinese-listed firms engaged in philanthropy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also utilized the stock returns and cash donation data, and owing to the cross-sectional data and continuous nature of dependent variables, they employed the ordinary least squares regression to test the research hypotheses.Findings The results show that irresponsible actions have a positive relationship with donations. The study particularly reveals that irresponsible firms have significant negative abnormal returns during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study to explore the perspective of corporate philanthropy during the COVID-19 pandemic for companies with different CSR levels. This study contributes to the empirical research on CSR and provides insights for managerial-cum-financial decisions to encourage managers of irresponsible firms to pursue philanthropic behaviors after crisis events.

Corporate Governance and Corporate Philanthropy during COVID-19: Mediating role of Knowledge Management

This study examines the role of corporate governance and corporate philanthropy during COVID-19, with the mediating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) knowledge management among Chinese listed firms. The study employed secondary data obtained from the Chinese Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database on board size (BS) and board composition (BC) as corporate governance proxies. The findings show that BS and BC have a positive but insignificant relationship with corporate philanthropy, while CSR knowledge fully mediates the relationship between corporate governance and corporate philanthropy. Additionally, we find that board size and board composition have a positive relationship with CSR knowledge. This study has practical implications for firms engaged in the process view of CSR knowledge, which actively contributes to COVID-19 philanthropy. The process view of CSR receives more information from outside stakeholders and implements their resources on the most recent CSR issue. This response creates value for the firm as it targets the most recent issue in society. © 2021 IEEE.

Adversity Tries Friends: A Multilevel Analysis of Corporate Philanthropic Response to the Local Spread of COVID-19 in China.

We examine corporate philanthropic decisions in response to the local spread of COVID-19. From a strategic perspective, firms may proactively undertake philanthropic efforts to limit the spread of the pandemic and avoid a degraded business environment. From the perspective of non-trivial costs, increased economic uncertainty can raise concerns about business survival and lead to conservative philanthropic strategies. Following the proverb "prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them," at the provincial level, our results support the second perspective. Specifically, when the spread of the pandemic worsens in a province, local firms are less likely to make COVID-19-related donations in terms of likelihood and amount. Investors also react negatively, not only to the local spread of COVID-19 but also to COVID-19-related philanthropic donations. At the organizational level, our evidence indicates that there is at least some level of cost-benefit analysis underlying corporate philanthropic decisions. Specifically, corporate philanthropic donations, especially those made to the local business environment, are significantly affected by organizational-level factors, such as pre-existing resource availability and motives to acquire political and reputational resources. Overall, our multilevel study presents a comprehensive picture of corporate philanthropic decisions amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The philanthropic response of substantive and symbolic corporate social responsibility strategies to COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from China.

The COVID-19 epidemic broke out in China in January 2020, which triggered the largest wave of corporate philanthropic donations since the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Based on A-share listed firms in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in 2020, we study whether substantive and symbolic corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies affect corporate philanthropic responses during the COVID-19 crisis. We use the lagged annual donation and technical dimension scores (T scores) of rankins ratings (RKS) as proxies of CSR performance and CSR disclosure and then define the CSR gap as the gap between the two. The results show that substantive and symbolic strategies cause firms to have material differential responses in the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, the CSR gap is negatively related to the possibility and the level of crisis donation. In addition, (1) this difference is more pronounced in the earlier period of the COVID-19 crisis; (2) the negative correlation is more pronounced in private firms; and (3) the crisis donation of firms with either strategy obtains no different response from the capital market. Our evidence suggests that the established CSR strategy influences the substantive response of Chinese firms to public emergencies, but their substantive response does not result in different reactions in the capital market.