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AIMS Environmental Science

2020, Volume 7, Issue 6: 542-558. doi: 10.3934/environsci.2020034
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Research article Special Issues

Corporate social responsibility in agri-food firms: the relationship between CSR actions and firm's performance

  • 1.
    School of Agricultural, Forestry, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy
  • 2.
    PhD in Environmental and agri-food economics, Naples, Italy
  • Received: 28 August 2020 Accepted: 24 November 2020 Published: 16 December 2020

  • Over the last years, many firms introduced environmental and social sustainability in their business mission and adopted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the operative tool of a new business model. Several studies focused on the relationship between CSR and firm’s performance or more generally value creation in the supply chain. The present work aims at giving further insight into this relationship with reference to the agri-food sector. It wants to illustrate a conceptual framework of this relationship and represents a preliminary empirical work aimed at understanding and testing some main link. Through multivariate techniques data on CSR actions were analysed to identify the firm CSR strategies and using the correlation analysis and non-parametric tests the link between CSR strategies and firm performance was tested, both directly and through innovation variables. Results highlighted that firms with lower CSR orientation have also lower profitability levels and showed the association between the adoption of specific innovations and some CSR patterns, while the connection innovation-performance was not statistically proved. The small size of the sample does not allow a conclusive analysis. Nevertheless, results provide useful insights to better specify the conceptual model CSR-performance.

    Citation: Adele Coppola, Sara Ianuario, Severino Romano, Mauro Viccaro. Corporate social responsibility in agri-food firms: the relationship between CSR actions and firm's performance[J]. AIMS Environmental Science, 2020, 7(6): 542-558. doi: 10.3934/environsci.2020034

    Related Papers:

  • Over the last years, many firms introduced environmental and social sustainability in their business mission and adopted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the operative tool of a new business model. Several studies focused on the relationship between CSR and firm’s performance or more generally value creation in the supply chain. The present work aims at giving further insight into this relationship with reference to the agri-food sector. It wants to illustrate a conceptual framework of this relationship and represents a preliminary empirical work aimed at understanding and testing some main link. Through multivariate techniques data on CSR actions were analysed to identify the firm CSR strategies and using the correlation analysis and non-parametric tests the link between CSR strategies and firm performance was tested, both directly and through innovation variables. Results highlighted that firms with lower CSR orientation have also lower profitability levels and showed the association between the adoption of specific innovations and some CSR patterns, while the connection innovation-performance was not statistically proved. The small size of the sample does not allow a conclusive analysis. Nevertheless, results provide useful insights to better specify the conceptual model CSR-performance.


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