Corporate social responsibility: does risk-taking attitude matter?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of risk-taking attitude as an important antecedent to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Design/methodology/approach The authors use regression models on a sample of 2,136 publicly traded US companies over a 10-year period. Findings Corporate risk-taking encourages the pursuit of CSR initiatives and internal (i.e. board strength) and external (i.e. financial analysts) corporate governance mechanisms strengthen that relationship. Originality/value While pursuing CSR initiatives involves financial and reputational risks that are evident by the variability in the outcomes (e.g. firm value) of firms that have historically undertaken CSR initiatives, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to theoretically explain why risk-taking is an important antecedent to CSR and empirically test that relationship.