Three Essays on the Positive and Negative Consequences of Corporate Social Responsibility and Irresponsibility
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THREE ESSAYS ON THE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND IRRESPONSIBILITY Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln 2018 vorgelegt von M.Sc. Samuel Stäbler aus Karlsruhe I Referent: Prof. Dr. Marc Fischer Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Werner Reinartz Tag der Promotion: 24. Oktober 2018 Acknowledgements This thesis is the culmination of my journey as a doctoral student. It is comparable to climbing a high peak—step by step—exciting, encouraging, breathtaking and frustrating at the same time. The feeling of strength and fulfillment at the top, accomplishing the final work, is something that can hardly be put into words. Though, I would like to express my appreciations to the people that accompanied me on this journey and significantly contributed to this final work. I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor Professor Fischer for his support, guidance, and his confidence in me throughout the last five years. I highly value his personal and his academic support, advices, and useful critiques. I am happy and grateful that he made me become a “real” researcher. I am looking forward to have tons of further research discussions and projects with him in future. Also, I would like to express my very great appreciations to Prof. Reinartz for serving as a member and Prof. Bruno for being the head of my dissertation committee. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. van Heerde who welcomed me as visiting researcher at Massey Univesity in New Zeland. I am grateful for his valuable advices throughout and above my stay. I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the help of colleagues who have offered guidance, tons of feedback, suggestions and fun (including one or two Kölsch) along the tough way—I am incredibly happy to have made a lot new friends: Thank you! My earnest thanks to Christa Körner— the front office manager and heart of our chair. She has always been there for me providing personal, emotional, and professional guidance. I am very glad to have made her a good friend. Also, I am grateful for the assistance given by student assistants. I challenged them, gave them tons of exhausting work and I do appreciate every task they have accomplished for me. To all of my friends, thank you for understanding and encouraging me in times when the doctoral thesis challenged my limits. We participated in so many events together (e.g., skiing, scuba diving, party weekends...) that generated the necessary energy to be working efficiently on my thesis. No business is like family business: I would like to express my sincere appreciations to my brothers Jonathan, Dominik (& Nui), and Thomas (& Sisi, Lara, and Valentin). Thousand times they proofread my papers, listened to me practicing my presentations and discussed new research ideas with me: Thank you! I would also thank my godchild Emma Poltz who was just born when I started my doctoral thesis. She has always allowed me to enter a world of being childish and silly. She gave me the chance to forget everything around me. Thank you! Further, I am grateful for the wisdom of my grandparents—Anna and Tibor Farkas-Jandl, and Emma Stäbler who have always believed in me and supported me whatever I have done. Last and most important, this dissertation is dedicated to my parents Bernadette and Dieter Stäbler: You supported me my whole life and were always there for me. I am immeasurably grateful for your wisdom, encouragement, and your endless love. Without you I would have never been who I am today. Thank you both for giving me the strength and happiness to reach my dreams. Samuel Stäbler CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES....................................................................................................................... V LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... VI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................... VII SYNOPSIS .................................................................................................................................... 1 1 Short Overview ............................................................................................................. 1 2 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 2 2.1 Relevance ............................................................................................................... 2 2.2 Literature Gaps ....................................................................................................... 4 2.3 Research Focuses and Contributions ...................................................................... 6 2.4 Overall Results ....................................................................................................... 9 3 Summary of Dissertation Projects ............................................................................ 11 3.1 Paper I: When Do Media Report Negative News About a Brand: A Study of Corporate Social Irresponsibility Events Across Five Countries ......................... 11 3.2 Paper II: The Impact of Corporate Social Irresponsibility Events on Consumer and Shareholder Perception: A Comparison of Five Countries ........................... 13 3.3 Paper III: The Impact of Favorable Media Coverage of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities on Consumer Perception Metrics and Stock Returns .. 15 REFERENCES SYNOPSIS ........................................................................................................... 18 PAPER I: WHEN DO MEDIA REPORT NEGATIVE NEWS ABOUT A BRAND? A STUDY OF CORPORATE SOCIAL IRRESPONSIBILITY EVENTS ACROSS FIVE COUNTRIES ....................... 21 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ 21 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 22 1.1 Research Question and Contribution .................................................................... 23 1.2 Related Literature ................................................................................................. 24 2 A Model of Negative Corporate News Selection ...................................................... 26 2.1 Theory of News Value ......................................................................................... 26 2.2 Deriving News Selection Criteria ........................................................................ 27 2.3 Model ................................................................................................................... 29 3 News Selection Variables for Corporate Social Irresponsibility Events ............... 30 3.1 Brand-related News Selection Variables .............................................................. 32 3.2 CSI Event-related News Selection Variables ....................................................... 34 3.3 Media-outlet-related News Selection Variables ................................................... 36 4 Data and Methodology ............................................................................................... 37 4.1 Sampling and Search Strategy.............................................................................. 37 4.2 Variable Operationalization ................................................................................. 40 4.3 Summary Statistics and Model-free Evidence ..................................................... 42 4.4 Econometric Model Specification ........................................................................ 43 4.5 Identification and Endogeneity ............................................................................ 44 5 Results ......................................................................................................................... 46 5.1 Hypotheses on Brand-related News Selection Variables ..................................... 47 5.2 Hypotheses on CSI Event-related News Selection Variables .............................. 48 5.3 Hypotheses on Media Outlet-related News Selection Variables ......................... 48 5.4 Control Variables ................................................................................................. 49 I 5.5 Robustness Checks ............................................................................................... 49 6 Discussion and Conclusions ....................................................................................... 50 6.1 Magnitude of the Influence of News Selection Variables .................................... 50 6.2 Implications for Marketing Theory ...................................................................... 54 6.3 Implications for Firms, Society, and Media ......................................................... 55 6.4 Limitations and Future Research .......................................................................... 57 REFERENCES PAPER I .............................................................................................................. 58 APPENDIX PAPER I ................................................................................................................... 61 Appendix 1 Media Outlets Used in the Empirical Study ................................................ 62 Appendix