Corporate social responsibility performance, financial distress and firm life cycle: evidence from Australia

This study examines the association between corporate social responsibility(CSR) performance and financial distress and additionally the moderatingimpact of firm life cycle stages on that association. Based on a sample of 651publicly listed Australian firm-years’ data covering the 2007–2013 period, ourregression results show that positive CSR activity significantly reduces financialdistress of the firm. In addition, the negative association between positive CSRperformance and financial distress is more pronounced for firms in mature lifecycle stages. Our results are robust to alternative proxy measures of financialdistress, CSR performance and life cycle stage