Does mandatory corporate social responsibility expenditure by businesses help their stakeholders?

Abstract This study examines the role of financial performance and board characteristics on corporate social responsibility expenditure (CSR expenditure hereafter). The study is based on a natural experimental design where the Government of India made it legally mandatory for companies meeting certain criteria to spend at least 2% of their average profits in the preceding three financial years towards corporate social responsibility in the companies Act 2013. It examines the propensity of companies to spend towards corporate social responsibility over and above the legal mandate. This study analyze two different schools of thought in the field of corporate social responsibility varying in their assertions. The first school of thought asserts that firms engaged aggressively in CSR expenditure would be viewed positively by the customers/prospective customers. The second school of thought asserts that CSR expenditure reduces the profit of the firm that could have been used productively for asset acquisition, and business expansion. The first school of thought focuses on the good corporate citizenship hypothesis whereas the second school of thought focuses on the efficient utilization of scarce resources hypothesis. Using a dataset of companies listed on NSE 500 index, we found a positive and statistically significant relationship between CSR expenditure and accounting‐based firm performance but a negative relationship with market based firm performance. Size of the firm has a positive relationship with firm performance, alluding to the presence of “size” effect. Board size, board independence and cumulative attendance in board meetings exhibit mixed results with firm performance. Note: A slightly different version of this paper was presented in the 15th ICBF‐2022 conference held at IBS Hyderabad in the online mode. We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the reviewers and participants whose suggestions helped improve this article.