Amy Nguyen-Chyung
Haas School of Business,
University of California, Berkeley
Strategic corporate social responsibility: Linking CSR performance and regulatory preferences

amy_nguyen@haas.berkeley.edu

Amy Nguyen-Chyung is a third-year PhD student in the Business and Public Policy Group (Business Economics) of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Her research interests include corporate social responsibility and non-market strategy. She presented a paper on non-market strategy at the 2009 Academy of Management Meeting. Amy holds a joint MBA-MPA from the Wharton School (University Of Pennsylvania) and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton University). She received her undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University. Her recent awards include the Crawford Research Fellowship, the Institute for Management, Innovation and Organization Fellowship, and the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship. She also received a 2008 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention in Economics. Prior to her doctoral studies, Amy worked over 8 years in management consulting, investment banking and government. Her favorite past-times include being with her children, travelling, and studying foreign languages.

Strategic corporate social responsibility: Linking CSR performance and regulatory preferences

Recent economic literature on corporate social responsibility ("CSR") has focused on CSR as a means to deter regulation and does not explain why many firms engaged in CSR initiatives actually want regulation or what firm motives might be absent a regulatory threat. Less attention has been given to alternative CSR motives such as producer protection or vertical (quality) differentiation. This paper argues that examining the three motives is important for understanding strategic CSR in the context of firms' broader non-market strategy. It addresses how a firm's environmental and social CSR performance may differentially impact regulatory preferences through regulatory deterrence, regulatory capture and vertical differentiation mechanisms. Predictions are tested empirically on decision-maker data from the largest global CSR/sustainability survey to date. Consistent with nuanced predictions of the theories, preference for government regulation is increasing in comparative environmental performance whereas stronger social CSR performance suggests preference for voluntary or potentially no regulation.