Why Scattered Pressure Leads to Symbolic CSR 

In this research, Dennis Bams studies how pressure from investors, employees and consumers builds the way firms adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR). 

Together with his co-authors, he uses 70 years of shareholder proposals at US-listed firms to build a new measure of how scattered this pressure is across issues and stakeholders.

Their results show that focused pressure leads firms to make real, substantive changes, while scattered pressure pushes them toward symbolic gestures such as reports and promises with little action. Scattered pressure lowers real CSR adoption by up to 70 percentage points, and is linked to higher emissions, more workplace accidents and more controversies. 

Watch the short video in which he explains his analysis ->

Do you want to know more about the results of this project?

Please download and read the full paper below