Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the act of taking social responsibility above what you need to do as a corporation. It can be of social, ethical or environmental character, for example an engagement in a local school or a voluntary reduction of pollution within the business buildings. There is no global standard concerning CSR, thus creating a definition gap where organisations are free to create their own definitions of the subject. This is in turn generating validity problems. Some companies are forced to behave as responsible corporate citizens by external pressure groups, for example by negative media attention. Others, though they are not as numerous, choose to implement CSR voluntary. An absolute model of CSR does not exist, since CSR is a concept with many different definitions. There are however two extreme schools that tries to explain CSR. Some argue that CSR is in the interest of all stakeholders, while others claim that CSR is a distraction from the shareholders interest. We have selected three models in order to give an overall picture. These will not however be used to validate the reality. We argue in our thesis that CSR can be used as a tool within the area of reputation marketing. The purpose is therefore to research this argument with accurate research methods. We conducted a qualitative survey, with a company within the business to business service sector in Sweden, and compared it with a quantitative survey amongst the company’s clients, combined with existing theories concerning CSR as a concept. This is done in order to see whether CSR has made an impact upon the clients’ selection process, whilst choosing service providers. Our findings show that there are other, more pressing interest areas that are important for the customers within this sector of business. But as pointed out by the service company itself, CSR is not doing any harm to the company, and in the long run, the overall trend is an increase in CSR-associated activities throughout the business environment.

While in several jurisdictions corporate criminal liability is accepted, in Brazil the maxim still prevails that corporations cannot commit crimes. In common law countries the attribution of criminal liability to corporations was developed more than a century ago, and the concept of corporate criminal liability has been extensively discussed. This work is an attempt to look into the common law experience and to offer a plausible basis for the introduction of corporate criminal liability in Brazil. The research is essentially theoretical; it is mostly based on relevant literature from Britain, Canada and United States, three exponents of common law jurisdictions, and on relevant literature from Brazil.

While in several jurisdictions corporate criminal liability is accepted, in Brazil the maxim still prevails that corporations cannot commit crimes. In common law countries the attribution of criminal liability to corporations was developed more than a century ago, and the concept of corporate criminal liability has been extensively discussed. This work is an attempt to look into the common law experience and to offer a plausible basis for the introduction of corporate criminal liability in Brazil. The research is essentially theoretical; it is mostly based on relevant literature from Britain, Canada and United States, three exponents of common law jurisdictions, and on relevant literature from Brazil.

Save energy, reduce carbon and environmental protection issues are now highly concerned in the world. To be a citizen of the world, every enterprise should proceed with environmental management and corporate greening no matter for the purpose of fulfilling the corporate social responsibility or making profits. Green corporate culture is the foundation of developing green corporate and core of green business modle. Therefore we interviewed 7 companies which have good perfornmance on the corporate greening, to look into what actions they took to promote the green values and change the employees¡¦behaviors in order to set up green corporate culture. We found the stronger the green values of the top management team, the more resources they invested to set up green corporate culture, and the more apparent on the atmosphere of the green corporate culture. Besides, in the aspect of industry difference, the company which is close to downstream value chain, belongs to new development industries, or with more capital, invested more to set up green corporate culture.

In this paper, it attempts to investigate whether corporate governance affects foreign investment or not. Furthermore, it also wants to detect what factors influence the percentage of foreign investment. Some hypotheses for corporate governance and foreign investment are developed in this study. Multi-regression models are conducted to test the relationship between corporate governance factors and foreign investment. The results of multi-regression models indicate that higher corporate transparency, bigger companies and companies with lower liability ratio attract more foreign investment. Moreover, companies held by big stockholders have higher percentage of foreign investment; on the contrary, family-owned firms are not preferred by foreign investors. In addition, foreign investors like to invest in firms having more independent directors. Furthermore, companies having GDR (Global Deposit Receipt) or ECB (Euro Convertible Bond) do increase the percentage of foreign investment. This paper also utilized the logistic regression to test what corporate governance factors act on the willingness of issuing GDR and ECB. As a result, it finds that company size, liability ratio and percentage of stocks held by owner¡¦s family all have impact on whether the company issue GDR or not. In addition, size and family holding are two significant factors that affect Taiwanese companies to issue ECB. Hence, this paper provides some information for foreign investment in Taiwan.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Freiburg (i. Br.), 2006. / Literaturverz. S. 194 - 217.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2008. / "Submitted to the Department of Accountancy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 24-26)

Tax avoidance that reduces transfers from shareholders to the government is traditionally viewed as value enhancing to shareholders. The agency perspective of tax avoidance, however, suggests that opportunistic managers may exploit the obfuscatory nature of tax avoidance to mask rent extraction. To shed light on these conflicting views, I use a self-constructed opacity index and multiple measures of tax avoidance to examine how corporate transparency relates to tax avoidance. I find that more transparent firms, which potentially have less severe agency problems, avoid more tax relative to their opaque counterparts. This result suggests that in a large section of the economy, tax avoidance is mainly engaged in by managers to enhance shareholder wealth. Further, I find that investors place a value premium on tax avoidance, but the price premium decreases with corporate opacity. This is consistent with the notion that corporate transparency facilitates the monitoring of managerial actions and thus alleviates outside investors’ concern with the hidden agency costs associated with tax avoidance. / text

Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Social Responsibility, socialt ansvarstagande, hållbarhet

Title: Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility in Rapidly Growing Firms – As a way of Strengthening the Corporate Brand Authors: Frida Dahlin and Anna Ledel Supervisor: Thomas Helgesson Examiner: Venilton Reinert Level: Bachelor thesis Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, Corporate brand, Gazelle companies Research question: How can gazelle companies develop CSR strategies to strengthen their corporate brand? Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate how Swedish gazelle companies are taking their rapid growth into consideration when working with CSR as a way of strengthening their corporate brand. This paper aims to examine how Swedish gazelle companies are managing their CSR strategies and if the fact that they are fast growing firms is affecting their strategic work, and in that case how. This paper aims to contribute with a better adjusted model of CSR that is applicable in the context of rapidly growing firms. Methodology: A deductive and qualitative method was chosen for a deeper, more detailed and descriptive explanation of the considered subject. Theoretical frame of references: Theories regarding previous research of corporate brand, CSR, reputation management and rapidly growing firms are brought forward. Empirical findings: Primarily data was collected and presented from three rapidly growing firms in Sweden. Conclusion: A new model has been developed that is aimed for gazelle companies to use when working with and developing CSR strategies as a way of strengthening the corporate brand.