Corporate Social Responsibility Performance during crisis. An EU approach

This paper aims at analyzing the impact of the financial crisis on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) performance, emphasizing the case of companies from European Union (EU) countries. An empirical analysis is conducted using the database available on Global Report Initiative (GRI). For accomplishing this, we will use Wilcoxon signed rank sum test, in order to test the CSR performance evolution for period 2007 – 2015. According to the GRI reporting guidelines we transform the application level of report standards in a point score system. The results indicated increased CSR performance before, during and after the financial crisis except for 2015, which confirm the results obtained by other researchers. The present study is important both for managers and policymakers: for manager,s to continue their CSR actions because is demonstrated the positive relationship between CSR and financial performance; and for authorities who have to adopt more incentives for supporting companies involved in CSR activities.