Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 1, 1990

Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting

In Search of Beneficence
Reflections on the Connections Between Firm Social and Financial Performance

As research continues to be conducted on the measurement, reporting, and financial connections of corporate social responsibility and firm performance, what appears to be emerging is the realization that the entities being studied are extremely complex and multi-faceted. This complexity is acknowledged by the authors and is addressed by the forwarding of several process and content suggestions based on ideas which may be reemerging from the past or have been developed recently in related research areas. These include the use of descriptive social action cataloging or textual inventories of corporations performing in socially acceptable or unacceptable ways; reputation ratings and descriptions of corporate social actions based on broadly defined criteria; and cases and case-ettes . Including those which highlight a corporation's relationships to its key stakeholder groups.