Today's consumers are increasingly concerned about corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, most consumers still know little about the real CSR performance of firms. If consumers are aware of the real CSR performance of firms, will they buy more from good firms and less from bad firms? This study aims to answer this question. This study first used the focus group technique to find out what aspects of CSR consumers cared about. It then ran an experiment to explore how a firm's CSR performance might affect consumers' intent to buy its product. Forty university students joined 6 sections of focus group discussion, with 5 to 11 students in each section. A convenience sample of 200 university students took part in the experiment, and they were randomly divided into 4 groups with 50 students in each group. In the experiment, each participant read a description of a fictitious shoe manufacturer and its environmental and philanthropic performance. Both the environmental and philanthropic performance could be either good or bad, and the experiment was thus a 2 (environmental performance) by 2 (philanthropic performance) design. Results showed that when participants were made aware of the firm's environmental or philanthropic performance, they would be more intended to buy from the good firm than from the bad firm. However, participants' environmental and philanthropic concern was not related to such an effect of CSR performance. Implications of these findings for the government and businesses are discussed.

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<p>Problem: CSR is today a frequently used concept, as companies to a larger extent are held accountable for what is happening in the society. The company should also inform the stakeholders about their CSR activities in an appropriate way, in order to capitalise from all possible benefits. According to Schrader et al. (2006), one group that is extremely important to inform is the con-sumers. In order to make a trustworthy impression and gain the most bene-fits, the choice of CSR activity and way of communication is crucial for the company, and therefore the perceptions of the consumers are very impor-tant to know more about and understand. Little research has been done about the consumers’ perception of CSR, especially for Swedish consumers.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to find out how Swedish consumers’ percep-tions and behaviour towards a company are influenced by communication of specific CSR activities.</p><p>Method: The data collection was done through a questionnaire that was completed online by 102 respondents. The respondents were asked to answer how their view of the company and willingness to buy from a company was changed by each the six specified CSR initiatives, as well as how they would prefer to get information about a company’s CSR activities. Their responses were analysed with help from consumer behaviour and promotion theories.</p><p>Conclusions: All the initiatives gave a positive influence on the respondents’ perceptions, but the ones resulting in the most positive changes of the perceptions and willingness to buy were social responsible business practises, cause-related marketing and corporate philanthropy, which are initiatives where the com-pany are doing the largest effort instead of just encouraging others to make an effort. The respondents answered that they trust the companies’ infor-mation about CSR to some extent, but also think a third party should scru-tinise the companies’ activities and inform. The most favourable channel for CSR information was in the store and on packages, from environmental or-ganisations and the company’s webpage. Therefore it seems like the re-spondents value that the companies provide information, but are not too forward and pushing the information on them by for example advertise-ments.</p>

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<p>There is a shift of values in the Western society of today from material to immaterial values Löhman and Steinholtz (2003). This changes together with the interest among people in Sweden and in the rest of the Western world to travel and experience new cultures the developing world has come closer. This has raised the awareness of the role of companies re-garding social responsibility since most companies have suppliers, producers or some other kind of involvement in developing countries. Today several companies are engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues. However, the topic of CSR has to a large extent divided a large part of the Swedish business world due to the strong opinions regarding this topic.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the concept of CSR is perceived by Swedish corporations and what implications it yields. This will be done by comparing the views of three different groups: managers in Swedish small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) and managers of Swedish large sized enterprises (LSE’s), responsible for CSR implementation, supplemented with the view of independent thinkers.</p><p>To perform the study a qualitative method has been used. Eleven interviews have been conducted with company representatives as well as independent thinkers that are involved in or have a great knowledge in the field of CSR. The respondents have been divided into three groups: ethically driven SME’s, LSE’s working with CSR and independent thinkers.</p><p>The concept of corporate social responsibility is perceived very differently in between the three groups. The views are split regarding their fundamental understanding of CSR, which is reflected in their relation to stakeholders as well as their thoughts about the future development of CSR. The motives, ideological and commercial, for working with CSR also dif-fers and some external thinkers believe that there are no motives for engage in CSR at all. The ethically driven SME’s have built their core business on social responsibility and is therefore the backbone of the companies. The LSE’s core business is not built on social responsibility, but rather on demands from the customers, who they regard as a critical stakeholder group. Some of the independent thinkers instead adhere to the shareholder approach and reject the concept of CSR. Nevertheless, all of the respondents agree on why CSR has developed, which is due to globalisation.</p>

Studien undersöker potentiella fördelar för företag att arbeta med och redovisa om CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, i termer av minskade avkastningskrav från investerare. Med utgångspunkt i teorier om informationsasymmetri och stakeholderteori testar vi om svenska börsnoterade företag som arbetar med och redovisar om CSR är förknippade med lägre risk och således också lägre avkastningskrav från investerare. Våra resultat visar att en separat publicerad CSR-redovisning eller hur företagen betygssätts för sitt CSR-arbete inte har någon påverkan på investerares avkastningskrav. Dock finner vi att avkastningskrav på företag som redovisar om och/eller vars arbete med CSR-frågor värderas högt blir lägre ju fler sidor de publicerar om CSR i en separat rapport.

The purpose with this essay is to explore the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the food industry. We have decided to focus on how five different ethical labels are communicated towards students and the standpoint of the study is the students understanding of the communication. The labels that we have chosen to examine in the study are KRAV, Fairtrade, Svanen, Ekologiskt Jordbruk and Rainforest Alliance. The primary research question in the study is ” How are the students purchase behavior affected by ethical labels in the food industry?”. Throughout the study we will refer to CSR-products as products are stamped with one or several of the named ethical labels. The study also contains one sub-question that will help to support the main research question and provide the study with a broader base. You will find the sub-question below. ”To what extend does the students understand the communication of the ethical labels?” The theories that we will use in this essay are ”Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)”, ”Brands”, ”Social Identity” and ”Encoding/Decoding”. CSR will be used as the main theory for this essay. The reason for this is that not only is it a theory but also the main topic that we investigate in this essay. We use branding as a theory because we want to examine if the communication from the labels affects students.  Social Identity is used to explore if the students at Karlstad University chose products with ethical labels because of trends and a feeling of belonging with specific groups. Encoding/Decoding is used to analyze and understand the communication of the ethical labels between the ethical labels and the students. We have chosen to use a Webb survey in our study to gather empirical data. The survey has been available for the population on Karlstad universities study platform “It’ s Learnings” homepage during two weeks. The result of the survey displays that the area of concern that the respondents believe is the most important is the environment and labor conditions.  The link that we see here is that KRAV, Fairtrade and Svanen all have high demands on environmental and labor condition-initiatives if a product should be allowed to carry their label. This means that this two area of concern is most important for the students. We can also see from the result that KRAV, Fairtrade and Svanen are the labels that are most visible in commercials and food stores. The research displays that friends together with social media are the channels where the students understand the highest amount of communication from ethicals labels work. We can also see in the result that quality is the most valued feature regarding products in the food industry. Quality is also one of the most important features for the products that are approved by the ethical labels presented in this study. The most notable result is that the students valued the labels but the ethical values did not always lead to a direct purchase. The result also pointed out that the reason for not always leaded to a purchase is different kinds of difficulties. The communication reaches the students but sees as deficient and has to develop to reach its full potential.

We construct a measure of CEO concern for non-equity stakeholders based on corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores, and we investigate how such incentives affect firm leverage and cash holding. In general, we find that non-equity stakeholder incentives decrease leverage and increase cash holding, after controlling for CEO managerial incentives and other firm characteristics. Our findings suggest that corporate social responsibility benefit non-equity stakeholders, which may come at the expense of shareholders.

We find significant evidence that academic directors enhance firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance after examining a sample of S&P 1,500 firms for years 2002 to 2011. The presence of academic directors in corporate board increases firms’ CSR performance. Within academic directors, female academic directors have positive incremental effect on firm’s CSR performance. We also find that academic directors’ and female academic directors’ influence on CSR activity is not similar across CSR components. Among seven qualitative components of CSR, academic directors have significant positive effect on community, diversity, environment and product components. At the same time, female academic directors have positive effect on diversity and employee relations but negative effect on environment. Finally, we observe that the effect of academics on CSR is heterogeneous across their academic specialization and experience. In particular, we note that academics with administrative responsibility, business background and industry experience have significant positive effect on firms’ CSR performance.