Growing through caring: An empirical study on the effect of corporate social responsibility activities on the profitability of firms in the ASEAN region

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has continued to gain importance in the business world. Demands of various stakeholder groups have been increasing and numerous firms have been required to devote part of their resources for the good of others. There are many perspectives regarding CSR as a business practice: one viewpoint sees CSR as a cost that must be incurred by a company another viewpoint sees it as an investment for the financial growth of the firm. It has been widely established that firms all over the world need to have CSR practices to foster good reputation not only among customers, but also to various stakeholders. Given the importance of CSR as a whole, its effect on form financial profitability has not yet been widely studied in the ASEAN setting. This study focuses on CSR practices of firms in the ASEAN region and quantities the benefits they receive from these practices using various measurements of firm performance. In this study, data will be gathered from CSRhub.com and will be compared to the financial performance of 208 firms from the ASEAN region. The study will also quantify CSR empirically and will test these CSR indexes against return on asset and return on equity