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Dongyoung Lee, Assistant Professor in Accounting, awarded 2019 SSHRC Insight Development Grant

Strategic recruitment from the corporate social responsibility rating agency: Does it increase corporate social performance and philanthropic contributions to society? Evidence from LinkedIn

Public firms spend a significant amount of resources to increase the level of corporate social performance for their firms. For example, Fortune Global 500 firms spent approximately $20 billion per year on corporate social responsibility (CSR) over the 2011 to 2013 period. However, little is known about exactly how the firm seeks to improve its CSR rating, that is, the external evaluation of corporate social performance, and whether a potential improvement in the CSR rating corresponds to actual dollar amounts of corporate philanthropy. Building on strategic human capital literature, this research project focuses on the firm鈥檚 鈥渓earning by hiring鈥� strategy. Specifically, I investigate changes in both CSR ratings and philanthropic contributions of firms hiring a former knowledge worker from the CSR rating agency. For empirical tests, I hand-collect data from LinkedIn profiles to identify a group of individuals with prior work experience involving the formulation of CSR ratings.

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