The corporate environmental responsibility and corporate financial performance: evidences from Vietnamese listed companies

Ho Viet Tien et al | 647 The corporate environmental responsibility and corporate financial performance: Evidences from Vietnamese listed companies HO VIET TIEN University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City French Vietnamese Center for Management Education hvtien@ueh.edu.vn HO THI VAN ANH University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City 2013anhhtv@st.ueh.edu.vn NGUYEN TRUNG CHINH Vietinbank Can Tho - chinhnt@vietinbank.vn Abstract Climate change has been the most challenging environmental problem that the world is facing It will affect the future of our green planet which can be seen from different stances Motivated by environmental problems could gain the sustainable growth and development Besides, many environmental scandals in Vietnam prove that Vietnam not pay enough intention to environment, present even a kind of environmental irresponsibility This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and corporate financial performance (CFP) on a sample of Vietnamese listed companies with a period of years (2012 – 2015) with 156 companies/year observations The environmental index was built and examined approach to by content analysis the companies’ annual report, after that using method of Karlsson (2005) and Ong et al (2014) to measure relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and the corporate financial performance as 648 | ICUEH2017 well as disclosed and reported CER information by listed companies The results indicate that efforts of environmental protection and activities may help them achieve higher finance performance in the same time and in the future as well Keywords: corporate environmental responsibility; corporate financial performance; Vietnam Introduction In recent years, corporate activities related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and environmental CSR (ECSR) in particular have been attracted from the practitioners and the academic community as well Until now firm's main objective is to maximize shareholders' wealth However, this approach can be too restrictive and even be dangerous, because of maximizing shareholders' wealth may harm its other stakeholders interest (such as polluting, exploiting the environment or discriminating amongst employees, etc) Therefore, CSR, a priori, should not necessarily be incompatible with corporate financial performance (CFP) However, the empirical literatures have not provided towards a stylized fact that CSR has a positive and statistically significant impact on CFP Margolis et al (2007) in a meta-analysis of 167 studies covering the period 1972 – 2007, conclude that the overall effect of CSR on firm performance is positive and trivial at best Great part of the existing empirical evidences on effects of ECSR on corporate financial performance is inconclusive and has mostly been negative For example, Bird et al (2007) found a negative relationship between firms' excess return and one year lagged ECSR activity Through meta-analysis by using the findings from 37 studies of Horvathova (2010) showed that the empirical evidence was still inconclusive as to the sign of the relation between ECSR and corporate financial performance: half of studies found positive impact while the rest document either a negative or an insignificant impact Marsat and Williams (2011) used the MSCI ESG rating relative to the environment and recently document a negative impact on firms' Tobin's Q ratios That concerns are likely to harm corporate financial performance seems ambigutiy and is widely documented (e.g Konar and Cohen, 2001) Thus, firms under potential threat of regulation in general are likely to incur a cost which will reduce CFP Hence, typical studies about the relationship between CER and corporate financial Ho Viet Tien et al | 649 performance focus on the direct effects Specifically, they regress a measure of firms' CFP (i.e Tobin's Q or return on assets) on a dummy variable capturing CER This approach is, of course, well suited to get the direct effects of firms related to corporate environmental responsibility Yet, Porter and co-authors in several contributions have suggested that complying with environmental regulation might have positive affected on firms and improved their production processes and made them more efficient This is the induced innovation idea and widely investigated in the literature For example, Jaffe and Palmer (1997) showed that lagged environmental compliance expenditure had a positive impact on firms' future R&D, Heyes and Kapur (2011) gave the conditions for a regulator to sustain such an effect Beside that almost the literature on this subject considers corporate environmental responsibility through the environmental outputs generated by the different companies Documents of gas emissions (Reilly, 1992; Hughes, 2000), rankings of (more or less) polluting companies such as Fortune’s corporate reputation index (Conine and Madden, 1987; McGuire et al, 1988; Fombrun and Shanley, 1990), penalties for violations of environmental regulations (Vasanthakumar, 1999) or environmental disclosure (AlTuwaijri et al, 2004; Dasgupta et al, 2006; Cormier and Magnan, 2007; Moneva et al, 2007; Moneva and Ortas, 2008) have been the proxies most often used for CER model Such a diversity of univariate models for measuring the CER has not helped to lay a strong empirical foundation for testing the possible links between corporate environmental responsibility and corporate financial performance Thus, it seems reasonable to suppose that a firm’s CER should be subject to a deeper review of its management mechanisms, its strategic management and its commitment to sustainable development Consequently, the CER measure must include both the outputs generated by the system (which may have a significant impact on the environment) and the proactive environmental policies implemented within the organization This study contributes to the present literature in the field by considering impacts of corporate environmental responsibility on corporate financial performance by content analysis and multivariate regression models The remainder of the paper is organized as follows Section shows the literature review Section describes the methodology and hypotheses Section provides first results of relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and corporate 650 | ICUEH2017 financial performance Finally, the main conclusions and implications of the paper are covered in the last section Literature review A Environmental Sustainability According to Moldan et al (vol.17), environmental sustainability - originally referred to as environmentally responsible development (World Bank, 2012), then environmentally sustainable development (Serageldin and Streeter, 1993), and until most recently - the environmental sustainability concept was developed (McGinn, 2009; Goodland, 1995) McGinn (2009) defined environmental sustainability - keep to improving the human welfare by protecting the sources of raw materials and preventing harm to humans Sutton (2008) said that environmental sustainability - the ability to maintain the qualities that are valued in the physical environment The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2001) described it under four specific criteria: regeneration, substitutability (non-renewable resources will be used efficiently and their use limited to levels which can be offset by substitution by renewable resources or other forms of capital), assimilation, and avoiding irreversibility The environmental dimensions concentrates on effects on natural systems such as land, water, air and ecosystems It shows a company’s effects on the physical environment that could be the most visible to consumers (McGinn, 2009) Some examples consist of energy input, air emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, land and ecosystem use, incidence reporting, and regulatory compliance (Reilly and Weirup, 2012) Environmental sustainability differs between organizations from heavily naturalresource-based organizations to banks and less natural-resource-intensive organizations (Hart and Ahuja, 1996) ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Standard is able to be a good framework to model an environmental assessment (Hart and Ahuja, 1996) While IMA (Institute of Management Accountants) proponed environmental performance indicators, for example the selection of raw materials; creation of planned waste streams and unplanned waste and by products; the impact of processes and indirect materials being used on employee health and the workplace; cost avoidance Ho Viet Tien et al | 651 in areas such as the internal costs of managing toxic materials; reducing waste levels and other similar environmental aspects B Corporate environmental responsibility and corporate financial performance Eccles et al (2013) showed a positive relationship between environmental improvement (EI) and the financial performance (FP) of 127 US firms that were drawn from the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P500) and engaged in the manufacturing, mining or production industries In which, EI was measured by the emission efficiency index (emissions per unit of output) for selected pollutants from 1988 to 1989 and ROS, ROA and ROE were proxies variations of corporate financial performance Similarly, in a study of manufacturing firms in the S&P 500, Vijfvinkel et al (2011) also found economically and statistically significant relationship between environmental performance and financial performance (calculated by Tobin’s q) Therefore, poor environmental performance will have a significantly negative effect on the intangible-asset value of firms Environmental performance was measured by the aggregate pounds of toxic chemicals emitted per dollar revenue of the firm and the number of environmental lawsuits pending against the firm Russo and Fouts (1997) investigated a sample of 337 Dutch and Chinese firms based on their communication of sustainability to employees and the origin country of the firms, using a binary logistic regression model They found that environmental sustainability significantly positive impacted on company performance (measured by profit and revenue development) It means that a firm’s policy on the re-usage of materials is positively correlated to profit development, while a firm’s policy on the reduction of pollution has in positive relation to revenue development Jaggi et al (1992) concluded a positive relationship between environmental performance (measured by environmental ratings expressed in FDRC) and ROA when using a sample of 243 U.S firms through regression analysis However, enormous studies have found that environmental performance negatively impacts on financial performance For example, Cordeiro and Sarkis (1997) studied 13 firms in the US pulp and paper sector and used data from 1978, suggested that there was a negative relationship between environmental performance (using an emissions intensity index pollutant/ton of production calculated separately for 652 | ICUEH2017 Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and pH) and financial performance (including net income, ROA, cash flow/equity ratio and cash flow/assets ratio) Magner (2005) showed that more recycling would result worse earnings-per-share growth through using Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data of 523 US firms Briefly, there is a negative relationship between environmental sustainability and financial performance Aragon-Correa and Rubio-Lopez (2007) also found a negative relationship between the environmental and financial performance when testing a sample of 37 European paper industries Apart from the results above, different studies suggest there is no significant relationship between environmental sustainability and financial performance A study analyzed 25 European companies from various sectors and did not find significant positive or negative relationship between the financial variables (ROA, ROE, and earnings per share) and any of the environmental variables (CO2 emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, and waste disposal) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (Global Reporting Initiative, version 3.1 - GRI, 2011) also found that there was no significant relationship between environmental sustainability (the total amount of organic carbon emitted) and financial performance (sales, ROI, and ROE) in the context of food industries in the UK and France Methodology A Data and Sample The study sample consists of listed companies on the Vietnamese stock market The listed companies were selected for this study due to the expectation that they would have more advanced information on the sustainability reporting The study covers a period of years, from 2012 to 2015 The main source of information was based on annual reports and sustainability reports from the respective listed companies in Vietnam following the method of (Singh and Kansal, 2011; Gutherie and Petty, 2001) Ho Viet Tien et al | 653 B Variables The independent variables in this study are environmental performance aspects While assessing organizational outcomes, financial performance is only one element in determining a firm’s effectiveness (Senge et al, 2008), (Nunnally, 1978), and multiple measures may be required to evaluate overall corporate performance The dependent variable is, therefore, financial performance, which is measured by ROA (Aras et al, 2010; Crisostomo et al, 2011), Tobin'q and firm risk - FR (Cheung et al, 2010; Dragomir, 2010; Saleh et al, 2011; Zhang and Gu, 2012; Ghelli, 2013; Li et al, 2013, Karagiorgos, 2010; Hussainey and Walker, 2009) C Corporate environmental responsibility Aspects In this study, there are three groups of corporate environmental responsibility with eight criterions (Ong et al, 2014), as below: E1: Environmental policy, environmental concerns, investment policy for the environment; E2: Materials, Energy, Water; E3: Emissions, Wastewater and Waste D Research Design Measurement of CER: The study selects companies with complete annual report and sustainability report and those listed throughout the period covered Content analysis was used to extract information about CER initiatives and to align with previous studies, indicates presence of CER information in company report and if otherwise (Branco and Rodrigues, 2006; Haniffa and Cooke, 2005) Total corporate environmental responsibility index includes three component CSR indexes and it is calculated as following: Component EI+, = total CERI+, = 145 /012 612 @ 145 :;?12 A (1) where: Total CERIij: Total corporate environmental responsibility index of the jth firm (2) 654 | ICUEH2017 Component EIij: Component environmental index of the jth firm nj: Total number of corporate environmental responsibility items per corporate environmental responsibility components for the jth firm cerj = 1if ith item is disclosed, if ith item is not disclosed So that ≤ CERj ≤ Measurement of other variables The study used three proxies of corporate financial performance (ROA, TBQ, FR) As for company size, we used logarit of total asset The ratio of total debt is used to total assets as our measurement of risk These variables have been used by extant literatures to examine the nexus between corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance (Waddock and Grave, 1997; Barbosa and Louri, 2005; Kapopoulos and Lazaretou, 2007; Stanny and Ely, 2008; Nelling and Webb, 2009) Following approaches of Karlsson (2005), Ong et al (2014) are used to examine the effects of corporate environmental responsibility on corporate financial performance of Vietnamese listed companies The model, expected to hold for each of our sample companies is stated as follows: Y,= = βD + βF CER ,= + βG Size,= + βA Lev,= + βM Indus,= + ε,= (1a) Y,= = βD + βF CER ,,=SF + βG Size,,=SF + βA Lev,,=SF + βM Indus,,=SF + ε,= (1b) Y,= = βD + βF E1,= + βG E2,= + βA E3,= + βM Size,= + βW Lev,= + βX Indus,= + ε,= (2a) Y,= = βD + βF E1,,=SF + βG E2,,=SF + βA E3,,=SF + βM Size,,=SF + βW Lev,,=SF + βX Indus,,=SF + ε,= where β0: the intercept estimates; Yjt: the corporate financial performance (ROA, TBQ, FR) ROA = net return on asset TBQ = (short-term debt + long-term debt + market value of equity)/total assets FR = (the standard deviation of profitability ratios in 250 trading sessions per year) * √250 (2b) Ho Viet Tien et al | 655 σZ[\ = _5 bc` 145 (^6_` ) σ\/[0 = σZ[\ × 250 => t: current year t - 1: previous year CERjt: total corporate environmental responsibility index of jth firm in period t E1, E2, E3: component measures of corporate environmental responsibility index Sizejt: a variable of firm size of firm in period t (the logarithm of total assets) Levjt: a variable of debt to equity ratio of firm in period t (DTA = total debt/total assets) Indusjt: a variable of industry of firm in period t (=1 if listed companies don’t belong to finance and real estate industries; = if otherwise) εjt: a random error of firm in period t Hypotheses: H1: There is a positive relationship between total and component corporate environmental responsibility indicators – corporate financial performance H2: There is a positive relationship between total and component one year laggedcorporate environmental responsibility indicators – corporate financial performance Results Summary of Descriptive Statistics The results of the descriptive statistics for the variables are presented in Table The mean value for E1 is 718109 to means that the average number of companies written under variable E1 is 718109 and so for the other variables The standard deviation for E1 is 211363 This is the dispersion for distribution of each E1 for the period of four years, and it also shows that E1 has a variation or spread of 211363 in the normal distribution 656 | ICUEH2017 Table Descriptive statistics for the variables Obs Mean Std Dev Min Max ROA 156 0942692 1024805 -.019 784 TBQ 156 1.085179 7505752 191 5.658 FR 156 3527051 1264064 449 875 E1 156 718109 211363 E2 156 3375449 3257516 E3 156 3653846 3782223 CER 156 4735705 1926214 Size 156 3.949872 1.728564 38 9.05 Lev 156 26125 2467714 95 Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata Correlation analysis Table Correlation analysis ROA TBQ ROA 1.0000 TBQ 0.4713 1.0000 FR E1 E2 E3 CER SIZE LEV FR 0.0887 -0.1436 1.0000 E1 -0.0082 -0.0398 -0.0642 1.0000 E2 0.2872 0.4256 -0.0182 -0.1487 1.0000 E3 0.2142 0.2930 -0.1516 -0.1281 0.3278 1.0000 CER 0.2992 0.4173 -0.1331 0.7240 0.7932 SIZE -0.2524 0.0386 -0.3415 0.0759 -0.2279 -0.1933 -0.2273 1.0000 LEV -0.4305 -0.1796 -0.0627 -0.0949 -0.2161 -0.1936 -0.2834 0.5369 INDUS -0.2743 -0.1878 -0.0937 -0.0940 -0.2053 -0.2651 -0.3237 0.4942 0.2896 0.1977 INDUS 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata As shown in Table 2, total CER, E2, E3 indicators positively correlate with ROA, TBQ (Jaggi et al, 1992; King and Lenox, 2001; Konar and Cohen, 2001; Dernall et al, 2005; Lo and Shue, Evans and Peiris, 2010; Guenster et al, 2011; Clarkson et al, 2011) while E1 indicator negatively correlates with ROA, TBQ Both total and component CER indicators negatively correlate with FR For control variables, the both CER indicators Ho Viet Tien et al | 657 are negatively correlated to Size, Lev, Indus but E1 indicator positively correlates with Size However, Elsayed and Paton (2005) not find correlation between corporate environmental responsibility - corporate financial performance and Cordeiro and Sarkis (1997) found a negative correlation between corporate environmental responsibility corporate financial performance Results of Multiple Regression Analysis A The relationship between corporate environmental responsibility - corporate financial performance in the same year Table The relationship between total corporate environmental responsibility index - corporate financial performance ROA Tobin’q FR 123453*** 9346648*** -.1268675** (4.68) (4.12) (-2.34) 0049362 0767863** -.0368006*** (1.38) (2.50) (-5.02) -.1427431*** (-6.21) -.2799906 (-1.44) 0784143* (1.69) -.0226269* (-1.77) -.213344** (-2.00) 0176672 (0.69) R-squared 0.4134 0.1716 0.1761 F 26.25 7.56 7.80 0.0000*** 0.0000*** 0.0000*** CER Size Lev indus P_value Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata Notes: (*), (**), (***): significance at 10%, 5%, 1% respectively Table shows a positive association of total corporate environmental responsibility corporate financial performance at 1% for all three equations Namely, the total corporate environmental responsibility indicator was positively correlated to ROA, TBQ and negatively correlated to FR at 1% and 5% respectively, confirming the correlation result in Table This finding is consistent with previous studies of Jaggi et al (1992), Russo and Foats (1997), Vijfvinkel et al (2001), King and Lenox (2001), Konar and Cohen (2001), Al-Tuwaijri et al (2004), Husted (2005), Dernall et al (2005), Lo and Shue (2007), Lee and Fagg (2009), Petersen and Vredenbury (2009), Callan and 658 | ICUEH2017 Thomas (2009) , Evans and Peiris (2010), Guenster et al (2011), Gregory et al (2011), Clarkson et al (2011) In general, the results mean that companies are involved in good corporate environmental responsibility activities to be going to improve better corporate financial performance Table The relationship between component corporate environmental responsibility indexes corporate financial performance ROA Tobin’q FR E1 -.0056978 (-0.30) -.2856882* (-1.81) -.0179487 (-0.48) E2 0606075*** 4864719*** -.0215713 (4.63) (4.50) (-0.85) 0059761 0498621 -.0486534** (0.53) (0.54) (-2.21) 0017503 0433691* -.0330933*** (0.57) (1.68) (-5.43) -.1121482*** -.1016961 0402702 (-5.87) (-0.64) (1.06) -.0193281* -.1894637** 0447999** (-1.87) (-2.21) (2.22) 0.4276 0.2146 0.2155 17.56 6.37 6.32 0.0000*** 0.0000*** 0.0000*** E3 Size Lev indus R-squared F P_value Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata Notes: (*), (**), (***): significance at 10%, 5%, 1% respectively E1: environmental policies, E2: using energy and natural resources, E3: waste Similarly, Table also finds a positive relationship between component corporate environmental responsibility indexes - corporate financial performance for all three equations at 1% But considering each specific variable, E1 indicator is negatively correlated to TBQ at 10% (as opposed to Jaggi et al, 1992) - implementing law, regulations of environmental policies can increase costs and reduce profits; E2 indicator positively correlates with ROA and TBQ at 1% (Russo and Fouts, 1997) - cost savings increase profit or thank to material reuse policies are positively correlated to profitability development Because companies support a reuse policy reducing energy Ho Viet Tien et al | 659 consumption, promoting energy savings, and reducing costs and increasing profits; E3 indicator has a negative correlation with FR at 5% (Cordeiro and Sarkis, 1997, Magner, 2005) – reducing firm risk under efforts to prevent pollution by reducing emissions, wastewater and Waste Thus, component corporate environmental responsibility indicators also have an impact on corporate financial performance B The relationship between corporate environmental responsibility - corporate financial performance in the different year Table The relationship between total one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility index - corporate financial performance ROA Tobin’q FR 1114081*** 8936029*** -.1381386*** (4.36) (3.69) (-3.21) Sizet-1 0056139 (1.24) 0464932 (1.07) -.0265489*** (-3.41) Levt-1 -.1146067*** (-4.15) -.2117243 (-0.82) 0601291 (1.28) -.0281876* (-1.80) -.159456 (-1.09) 0132466 (0.51) 0.4527 0.2003 0.2289 CERt-1 Indust-1 R-squared F P_value 16.75 4.95 5.79 0.0000*** 0.0013*** 0.0004*** Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata Notes: (*), (**), (***): significance at 10%, 5%, 1% respectively Table provides a positive relationship between total one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility index - corporate financial performance at 1% for all three equations Namely, total CERt-1 indicator had significantly positive effects on ROA, TBQ, and negative effect on FR at a significant level of 1% These results will change investor’s perception of the company because investors appreciate and favor more environmentally friendly companies This finding is also consistent with previous studies (Jaggi et al, 1992; Russo and Foats, 1997; Vijfvinkel et al, 2001; King and Lenox, 2001; Knar and Cohen, 2001; Al- Tuwaijri et al, 2004; Husted, 2005; Dernall et al, 2005; Lo and Shue, 2007; Lee and Fagg, 2009; Petersen and Vredenbury, 2009; Callan and 660 | ICUEH2017 Thomas, 2009; Evans And Peiris, 2010; Guenster et al, 2011; Gregory et al, 2011; Clarkson et al, 2011) Table The relationship between component one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility indexes - corporate financial performance E1t-1 E2t-1 E3t-1 Sizet-1 Levt-1 Indust-1 R-squared F P_value ROA Tobin’q FR -.0035525 -.2836975 -.0461117 (-0.16) (-1.43) (-1.00) 0996505*** 634021*** -.0308251 (5.42) (3.70) (-0.78) 0213534 2038108 -.0831006*** (1.50) (1.58) (-2.79) 0039527 0360891 -.0270276*** (1.04) (1.02) (-3.31) -.1013391*** -.1427573 0560881 (-4.41) (-0.69) (1.16) -.024438* (-1.87) -.1551016 (-1.310) 0059114 (0.22) 0.5825 0.3237 0.2256 17.67 5.98 3.64 0.0000*** 0.0000*** 0.0032*** Source: Results collected by authors and calculated on Stata Notes: (*), (**), (***): significance at 10%, 5%, 1% respectively E1: environmental policies, E2: using energy and natural resources, E3: waste Similarly, Table also shows a significant relationship between component one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility indexes - corporate financial performance at 1% However, it doesn’t provide any statistically significant relationship between E1t-1 and corporate financial performance; E2t-1 indicator is positively correlated to ROA and TBQ at 1% (Russo and Fouts, 1997) - thanks to the material reuse policies in last year that positively correlates with current year's profitability development; E3t-1 indicator has a negative correlation with FR at 1% (Cordeiro and Sarkis, 1997; Magner, 2005) In summary, both total and component one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility indexes have an effect on corporate financial performance in the current Ho Viet Tien et al | 661 year However, when considering the effect of each one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility indicator the result is mixed (E2t-1 and E3t-1 indicators impact on corporate financial performance, but E1t-1 indicator is not) Conclusion This paper has investigated the impact of total and component corporate environmental responsibility indicators on corporate financial performance by considering Annual report, Sustainability report and websites of Vietnamese listed companies from 2012 to 2015 We have only focused on impacts of corporate environmental responsibility on corporate financial performance, other macro factors (the economic conditions, environmental business and the like that) are not considered during the period of the study The first empirical results showed a significant relationship between total and component corporate environmental responsibility indicators, total and component one year lagged-corporate environmental responsibility indicators and corporate financial performance but not find any relationship between E1t-1 (one year lagged environmentally policies) and corporate financial performance in the different year It means that implementing firm's environmental policies in previous year not impact on corporate financial performance in current year but firm's real activities (through preventing pollution, reducing emissions and saving input energy,…) will have significant effects on corporate financial performance for both in same and different year Thus, this is the first study to have contributed to the environmental reporting literature by providing empirical results from the perspective of Vietnamese listed companies The findings of the study show that Vietnam - a developing country - reported the increasing number of environmental reports and concerned with firm's environmental action quality over the past few years On the other hand, environmental activities are divided into three variables in this study, future researchers can relate all the variables with corporate financial performance to see more in-depth relationships between them In addition to corporate financial performance indicators used in this paper, future studies can also add to some other corporate financial performance variables to investigate this relationship 662 | ICUEH2017 References Al-Tuwaijri, S.A, Christensen, T.E and Hughes, K.E 2004 The relations among environmental disclosure, environmental performance, and economic performance: A simultaneous equations approach Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol 29, No 5-6, pp 447–471 Aragon-Correa J.A and Rubio-Lopez E.A 2007 Proactive corporate environmental strategies, myths and misunderstandings Long Range Planning, vol 40, no 3, pp 357-381, 2007 Aras, G, Aybars, A and Kutlu, O 2010 Managing corporate performance Investigating the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in emerging markets International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol 59, no 3, pp 229-254 Aras, G and Crowther, D., 2007 Is the global economy sustainable? 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