Purpose – This paper sets out to investigate the effect of
differences in national cultures on the social and environmental
performance of companies around the world.
Design/methodology/approach – Theoretical
propositions on how the various dimensions of national culture
influence corporate social responsibility are developed and empirically
tested.
Findings – The authors propose that
companies based in countries characterized by higher levels of power
distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance exhibit
lower levels of social and environmental performance. Empirical tests
of these propositions are performed via pooled ordinary least squares
regression models using a novel proprietary dataset on 463 firms from
23 North American, European and Asian countries. Power distance and
masculinity are found to have a significant negative effect on
corporate social and environmental performance, whereas cultural
differences with respect to individualism and uncertainty avoidance
have no significant effect.
Originality/value – The
potential contribution of this work lies in offering empirical evidence
to test the widely held assumption that corporations' socially
responsible behavior is influenced by the cultural context in their
home country. The adoption and the external appreciation of this kind
of behavior does appear to be contingent on specific dimensions of
national culture, but not on others. Thus, positive social change
through voluntary corporate action may be optimized via initiatives
that build on specific cultural values in the relevant country.
