Does CSR practice pay off in East Asian firms? A meta-analytic investigation

Academics and practitioners have long wondered whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice is beneficial for Asian firms. To better understand the relationships between CSR and business performance, we use meta-analytical techniques based on 31,773 East Asian firms reported in 28 empirical studies to provide cumulative evidence for the value of CSR. Meta-analytic results indicate a general positive association between CSR and business performance. We find that environmental CSR has a stronger impact than social CSR on business performance, and that CSR practice has a stronger positive effect on operational performance than on financial performance. Further meta-analytic evidence indicates that several moderating issues explain significant variances in the effect size across studies, including economic development stage (developed vs. developing), firm size (SMEs vs. non-SMEs), organizational form (public vs. private), and measurement methods (archival data vs. self-report). Moreover, we find that CSR importance in East Asia has not varied over the past 15 years. We conclude with theoretical contributions and practical implications.