The paper titled Factors Influencing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Spend in Indian Companies: An Econometric Analysis, by Shekar Babu, Research Scholar, Amrita School of Business, Bengaluru campus, received the Best Research Paper award at Interactive Dialogical Workshop on Corporate Social Responsibility at the Indus Business Academy, Bangalore on February 22, 2014.

The research paper was a classic pedagogy on the necessity of Indian companies in both the public and the private sector to show a true commitment to the society, increase their social media visibility, provide public relations benefits, improve government relations and build a positive workplace environment.

The paper emphasized on the firm’s understanding about their responsibility towards the society despite the law making CSR mandatory. Questions were raised on the lackadaisical approach of private sector companies as compared to those by the public sector employees. The impact of the firm’s decision to spend on CSR in their services or manufacturing was also closely surveyed.

The research had attempted to identify the financial factors like profitability, revenue, sales turnover, age of the company, number of employees, type of ownership of a firm, type of industry a firm operates, return on assets and the liquidity of a firm that influenced CSR spending through a detailed review of the corporate through statistical models.

“Even though companies spend on CSR activities, they do not spend, as much they are capable of. It is possible to succeed in the world today only through a strong commitment to values”, emphatically stated Prof. Shekar Babu.

February 22, 2014
Amrita School of Business, Bengaluru