CSR related management practices and firm performance: An empirical analysis of the quantity–quality trade-off on French data

This paper analyzes how different combinations of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dimensions affect corporate economic performance. We use various dimensions of CSR to examine whether firms rely on different combinations of CSR, in terms of quality versus quantity of CSR practices. Our empirical analysis based on an original database including 10,293 French firms shows that different CSR dimensions in isolation impact positively firms’ profits but their effect in term on intensity varies among CSR dimensions. Moreover, the findings on the qualitative CSR measure, based on interaction between its dimensions, show that the substitutability of these dimensions is highly significant for firm performance. However, in terms of the intensity, those interactions produce differential effects. Actually, asking whether a firm starting with a certain configuration cannot perform better by adding or removing some dimension(s) we found that only one configuration fulfills this requirement: green and HR. The interpretation is that when a firm starts with this configuration then it is better not to move to another configuration. In all other configurations, firms can always improve their profits either by adding or removing some dimensions. Finally, the profitability of CSR investments in French firms seems to rely on a specific qualitative mix of different CSR dimensions rather than a pure quantitative approach accumulating practices without designing a consistent set of interactions among them.