The impact of social incidents on CSR transparency and performance : A quantitative study examining companies listed in the European Union

In the last decades there was an evolving theoretical and practical discussion about the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR), partially provoked due to the occurrence of incidents which were caused by negligently companies. Furthermore, there is a disagreement of financial outcomes of the implementation of CSR strategies in prior research. The thesis contributes to the limited established empirical research on the impact of social incidents on company’s CSR transparency and social performance of companies listed in European Union Member States. Furthermore, the thesis examines the impact of social performance on financial performance based on 308 observations in a time range of 2012 to 2014. The author finds no significant relationship between incidents and an improved CSR transparency or social performance for the overall sample at any conventional level. However, the author finds a positive significant relationship between social performance and financial performance, measured by the logarithm of Tobin’s q, which indicates that social performance has a positive impact on financial performance