An Exploration of the Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility Performances on Shareholders’ Return

Abstract

At a time when there is general increase in price level and decrease in the purchasing power of currencies, many companies channel more energy towards their economic survival. One of the conflicting questions that confront the management of companies at such critical time is, “Do we focus on stakeholders’ concern or shareholders’ concern”. Emanating from this, this study examined the influence of corporate social responsibility performance on returns to shareholders. It thus, focused on three aspects of corporate social responsibility (labour practices, human rights practices and customer health and safety practices) on shareholders’ return on investment. Secondary data were sourced from annual financial and sustainability reports of 46 sampled companies from the period 2012 to 2021. Results from the regression analyses reveals that labour practices have negative influence on shareholders’ return on investment while human rights practices and customer health and safety practices both have positive influence on shareholders’ return on investment. However, all effects were found not to be statistically significant. Owing to this, it is concluded that corporate social responsibility performances have no significant influence on shareholders’ return. This could be due to poor performance scores in some areas of corporate social responsibility practices and the weak monitoring infrastructure in the Nigerian scenario, it is therefore recommended that the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) builds minimum reporting benchmarks for each expected performance component of social responsibility practices with annual awards to encourage better social responsibility performance among Nigerian listed firms generally and specifically, the Nigerian manufacturing sector which is currently a major contributor to the Nigerian economic development.