DUGi

Efficiency and Sustainability of CSR Projects

http://dugi.udg.edu/item/http:@@@@hdl.handle.net@@2072@@292943

The progressive expansion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been accompaniedby an increasing interest from regulators and market analysts. Governments and supra-nationalorganisations have issued guidance rules on CSR, while market analysts have created a set ofgatekeepers focused on its evaluation, publishing rankings and comparative reports. The UN GlobalCompact and the sustainability indexes are two relevant examples. The complexity and some of thefunctions of this CSR infrastructure have common features with the financial system. Information isat the core of both. The distinction between information and noise is central for building up efficientfinancial markets. The aim of this paper is to analyse how information can be separated from noise inCSR. To this end, we develop a qualitative model that centres on the following variables: the CSRfeatures of the project under consideration, its financial features, its relationship with corporatestrategy, the performance metrics for its analysis, the different kinds of risk it involves, and itsimpact on value creation. This model relies on two common functions that we identify in the CSRinfrastructure and the financial system: the defining function and the performance informationfunction. The model is applied to Adidas’ CSR policy

MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)