Do Stakeholders Connect Corporate Social Responsibility to Firm Performance? Testing Stakeholder Influence Capacity Theory
2019-09
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Do Stakeholders Connect Corporate Social Responsibility to Firm Performance? Testing Stakeholder Influence Capacity Theory
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2019-09
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This dissertation tests stakeholder influence capacity theory predicting corporate social responsibility affects firm performance by first influencing the behavior of a firm's stakeholders. In a series of chapters, the dissertation reviews research at the intersection of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management, uses causal inference research designs to test for a direct effect of responsibility on performance, tests whether stakeholder influence capacity mediates the responsibility-performance relationship as predicted by stakeholder influence capacity theory, and tests whether stakeholder influence capacity is stakeholder-specific rather than a single firm capability applicable to all stakeholders. The findings are the following. First, they support the responsibility literature's lack of consensus about a main effect of responsibility on performance. Second, there is mixed evidence for whether stakeholder influence capacity mediates the effect of responsibility on performance, with some models showing partial mediation, some full mediation, and others no mediation. Third, stakeholder-specific mediation tests provide some evidence that stakeholder influence capacity varies by stakeholder group, with no evidence for customer stakeholders, some evidence for employee stakeholders, and strong evidence for environment stakeholders. These findings suggest the responsibility performance literature's lack of consensus around an effect of responsibility on performance could be due to lack of attention to the specific mechanism that connects corporate responsibility actions to performance. Lack of attention to mechanisms was identified at least two decades ago, but only now are scholars beginning to specify and test mechanisms. Stakeholder influence capacity theory advances responsibility research by proposing a stakeholder influence capacity mechanism connecting responsibility to performance. This dissertation is one of the first empirical tests of stakeholder influence capacity theory's mediation hypothesis. Prior work tested stakeholder influence capacity as a moderation hypothesis; the authors of that study explicitly note that the theory is a mediation theory while their empirical test is moderation. This dissertation using mediation analysis more directly tests the theory and finds suggestive evidence that the theory needs further development to account for stakeholder heterogeneity. The primary contributions of this dissertation are advancing the ongoing integration of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management research, empirically testing stakeholder influence capacity, and advancing stakeholder influence capacity theory by showing the need for further theoretical development accounting for stakeholder-specific influence capacity. The final chapter charts future research directions needed to further develop the theory and understand whether and how firms' corporate social responsibility actions influence stakeholders and, ultimately, the firm's economic performance.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. September 2019. Major: Business Administration. Advisor: Alfred Marcus. 1 computer file (PDF); xvi, 226 pages.
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Poggioli, Nicholas. (2019). Do Stakeholders Connect Corporate Social Responsibility to Firm Performance? Testing Stakeholder Influence Capacity Theory. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/208982.
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