Corporate social performance and corporate financial performance

As discussed in Chap. 2, awareness and practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have significantly changed since the 2000s by globalization of business and stock ownership structure. Owing to the prolonged economic stagnancy since the beginning of 1990s, revitalization of the Japanese economy became the top agenda for government policy, and the economic responsibility of corporations was interpreted as their primary responsibility. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Japanese corporations seem to have begun to review CSR activities to find a new path to stakeholder relationships in revitalization of business. Interesting research questions are how CSR activities link to economic performance and risk management, and how stakeholder management contribute to performance and risk in the context of Japanese firms in the 2000s.