The impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Corporate Financial Performance: an empirical study in the Italian market

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a term coined many decades ago but that is still in evolution. More in detail, its effect on Company Financial Performance (CFP) is still no clear, due to a not defined set of variables for its definition. The reporting of non-financial information, which has always more importance in communicating CSR activities to stakeholders, could be used as source of indicators for company social performance. After an analysis of the existing literature, in terms both of theoretical and empirical case studies, the aim of this research is to assess the relationship between CSR and CFP. In this context, the selected sample includes some enterprises of the Italian market: CSR indicators are based on those provided by the GRI framework, whereas CFP is represented by the indicators of ROA and ROS. Data used for CSR performance have been collected from public accessible reports of non-financial information; in contrast, financial data have been collected by the database AIDA. Results have in part confirmed previous literature research, by identifying a relationship between some of the indicators selected for CSR and CFP, but these results are limited just to a minor part of the variables selected.