The CSR-Quality Trade-Off: When can Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Ability Compensate Each Other?

By Guido Berens, C. Riel, Johan van Rekom. 2007

232 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company’s CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company’s products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, a poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/85c4ba9b8be3ceebbb89e40bc97825d78333e594

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Citations in the corpus

CSR related management practices and Firm Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the Quantity-Quality Trade-off on French Data (2015, background): “In this sense, Berens et al. (2007), examining the effect on product preferences, find that a poor corporate ability could not be compensated by good CSR.”
Corporate social responsibility: attributions, loyalty, and the mediating role of trust (2009, background): “Cognitive psychology research finds that the “negativity effect” arises across a broad range of psychological phenomena (Baumeister et al. 2001), and its presence suggests that positive attributes cannot fully compensate for negative attributes ( Berens et al. 2007 ).”
Customer expectations of CSR, perceived service quality and brand effect in Thai retail banking (2009, background): “…share (Owen and Scherer, 1993), image and brand (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Cone et al., 2003; Folks and Kamins, 1999; McWilliams and Siegel, 2001), and customer loyalty (Berens et al., 2007; Cone et al., 2003; Lichtenstein et al., 2004; Garcia de los Salmones et al., 2005; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001).”
Corporate social responsibility in the food sector (2011, background): “In addition, the results of quantitative (e.g. Folkes and Kamins 1999; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006; Berens et al., 2007) 302 M. Hartmann at C B S Library on A ugust 16, 2011 erae.oxfordjournals.org D ow nloaded from C o rp o ra te so cia l resp o n sib ility in th e fo o…”
Consumer behavioural intentions in cause-related marketing. The role of identification and social cause involvement (2010, methodology): “CSR associations were measured with 3 items chosen from the works by Lichtenstein et al. (2004), and Berens et al. (2005); CA associations were approximated through a two-item scale based on works by Berens et al. (2005) and Berens et al. (2007) .”
An organizational ethic of care and employee involvement in sustainability-related behaviors: A social identity perspective (2017, background): “…of organizational characteristics shape how employees interpret and respond to CSR activities because they influence whether such activities are perceived as authentic reflections of a firm’s commitment to pro-sociality (Berens et al., 2007; Folkes & Kamins,1999; Handelman & Arnold, 1999).”
A model of customer loyalty and corporate social responsibility (2011, background): “Another recently identified factor is the positive influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Berens et al., 2007; Mohr et al., 2001; Pirch et al., 2007; del Mar Garcia de los Salmones et al., 2005; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001).”
An Integrated Model to Explain How Corporate Social Responsibility Affects Corporate Financial Performance (2015, background): “Several scholars suggested that CSR activities have negative effects on firm performance [38].”
“Yes, but this Other One Looks Better/Works Better”: How do Consumers Respond to Trade-offs Between Sustainability and Other Valued Attributes? (2015, result): “Our findings are also conceptually consistent with research by Berens et al. (2007) who show that poor product quality cannot be compensated by a positive CSR assessment.”
Competition-motivated corporate social responsibility (2013, background): “Third, the study of competitive intensity as a boundary condition to CSR is a timely matter (Berens et al., 2007), given that the effectiveness of CSR initiatives is questioned by management, especially in times of an economic downturn.”