Corporate social responsibility engagement and firm performance in Asia Pacific: The role of enterprise risk management

Abstract

Abstract We examine a channel through which corporate social responsibly affects firm performance. More specifically, we modeled the mediating role of enterprise risk management between corporate social responsibility and firm performance. We use the weighted average of environmental, social, and governance scores (as a proxy of corporate social responsibility) extracted from DataStream of Thomson Reuters‐ASSET4. Drawing on the stakeholder theory and using a large sample of 1021 Asia Pacific firms throughout 2006–2016, we show that corporate social responsibly is positively associated with firm performance. Our results suggest that corporate social responsibly is linked to enterprise risk management. However, the effect of corporate social responsibly on firm performance is both direct and indirect. We provide evidence that enterprise risk management partially mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm performance. We account for the issue of endogeneity and use alternative measures of firm performance for a robustness check. The findings offer important implications of socially responsible business processes through leveraging on the significance of enterprise risk management.