Business Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

In recent years, corporate social responsibility has become a widely accepted trend in the business world. Due to the growing importance of corporate social responsibility in the operations and performance of the company and its impact on society, corporate social responsibility has become an important issue in the accounting and management literature and societal concerns about environmental and social issues have increased sharply. The scope of these concerns has also shifted to the corporate environment, as companies are expected to focus on environmentally friendly activities and social responsibility. Over the past years, the number of companies volunteering in the field of corporate social responsibility has increased dramatically and this issue has attracted the attention of researchers. On the other hand, The business strategy is a reflection of a company's actions and decisions to understand and adapt to the environment and find the desired position in society in order to achieve the highest level of performance. a company's strategy shapes the underlying economic logic of resource allocation management decisions. Prospective companies are trying to focus on a structural strategy that has the most economic benefits in the long run. In contrast, defender firms tend to pursue a retention or withdrawal strategy, which aims to maximize profits for the current period in exchange for future economic benefits. Therefore, the present study examines the impact of business strategy on the level of corporate social responsibility disclosure.  

A sample of 127 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2014 to 2018 was selected. For this purpose, to determine the type of business strategy of companies, the combined scoring system of Ittner et al. (1997) was used and to measure social responsibility, a checklist consisting of 39 disclosure items was used and the research hypotheses were tested using a multivariate regression model based on the panel data technique.

The research findings indicate that companies with aggressive business strategy (prospectors) are more inclined to disclose corporate social responsibility than defenders. In other words, using an aggressive business strategy increases the disclosure of corporate social responsibility. Also, the results of sensitivity analysis test showed that the use of alternative criteria to measure the company's business strategy has no effect on the main results of the research and the research results are robust.  

Compared to other company strategies that change over time, a company's business strategy is one of its main components that is selected in the start-up phase of any company and by determining the company's business policy, not only creates internal stability, Rather, it aligns the characteristics and strategies of the company with itself. The findings indicate that the performance of corporate social responsibility is formed to some extent through the business strategy adopted at the beginning of the company. Companies with prospectors business strategies are more likely than defenders to invest in corporate social responsibility. In other words, using an aggressive business strategy increases the disclosure of corporate social responsibility. According to resource-based theory, there is competition between companies in terms of having tangible and intangible resources. The company's social responsibility activities also develop the company's intangible resources by improving the company's reputation, promoting innovation and increasing customer trust. On the other hand, prospectors are more in need of promoting their reputation and brand among customers than defenders, as well as maintaining their innovation capacity, and are less concerned with reducing costs, and are more focused on experimentation and innovation. As a result, prospectors with the long-term horizons they draw motivate managers to invest in long-term activities and provide the opportunity to realize the potential values of corporate social responsibility activities and seek to participate in corporate social responsibility activities for better performance. Therefore, corporate social responsibility activities are very important for prospectors compared to defenders.