Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Financial Performance in the Food and Beverage Industry

Corporate executives have a responsibility to stakeholders to justify expenses, including those devoted to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, and strengthen the organization's financial position. Due to a lack of consistent information, some food and beverage industry managers do not understand the relationship between social and environmental CSR initiatives and financial performance. Grounded in stakeholder and ethical theory, this quantitative correlational study examined the relationship between 2 variables: the independent variable of social and environmental CSR activities, for which the 2016 Best Corporate Citizens index of 'Corporate Responsibility Magazine' served as a proxy, and the dependent variable of financial performance, as measured by reviewing a 24-month return on assets. The significance test appears twice for a bivariate regression analysis: The F test reported as part of the ANOVA table and the t test associated with the independent variable in the coefficients table. The p value is the same as they are the same test. The yield was: F(1, 10) = .246, p = .633 and t(10) = .496, p = .633. The magnitude of the correlation coefficient was .173, which suggested that financial performance had no relationship with social and environmental CSR initiatives. When reviewing the overall financial rank of all 100 companies in the BCC index, a similar trend emerged. The yield was: F(1, 99) = .202, p = .654 and t(99) = -.449, p = .654. The extent of the correlation coefficient was -.045, which suggested that financial performance had no relationship with social and environmental CSR initiatives. This study has an implication for positive social change with management's decisions about social and environmental sustainability initiatives.