There now exists a large and growing literature on what has come to be known as “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). The largest strand of this literature is devoted to studies that attempt to determine whether CSR is associated with superior financial performance for those firms that engage in it. This article first provides a definition of CSR that makes it possible to talk about it in a concrete way; it then identifies the ways in which CSR might lead to superior financial performance; next it reviews the empirical evidence bearing on this hypothesis; finally, the paper concludes by asking whether this much-hyped phenomenon is really that new after all and suggests that normative judgments about CSR are more complicated than one might think.
