We examine how a firm’s productivity level is related to its potential corporate social responsibility (CSR) objectives for innovations, and whether this relationship is affected by firm size. Two CSR objectives for innovations are examined: a firm’s objective of reducing environmental impacts, and an objective of improving health or safety of the employees. Firm size is measured by the number of employees. A data set comprising Norwegian manufacturing firms with or without innovation activity is used. The estimation results show that the predicted probability of adopting the objective of reducing environmental impacts has a significant negative effect on the productivity level among large firms while this effect is not significant among small firms. The predicted probability of adopting the objective of improving health or safety of the employees has no significant effect on the productivity level of small or large firms. These results indicate that whether ‘it pays to be green’ or not, depends on firm size. The article offers a resource argument in order to explain the different results between small and large firms.

中文翻译：

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企业生产力，企业规模与企业社会责任目标之间的关系

我们研究了企业的生产率水平如何与其潜在的企业社会责任（CSR）创新目标相关联，以及这种关系是否受到企业规模的影响。研究了两个企业社会责任创新目标：一个企业减少环境影响的目标，一个改善员工健康或安全的目标。公司规模由员工人数来衡量。使用包括或不具有创新活动的挪威制造公司的数据集。估计结果表明，采用减少环境影响这一目标的预测概率对大型企业的生产率水平具有显着的负面影响，而在小型企业中这种影响并不显着。采用改善员工健康或安全目标的预期概率对大小企业的生产率水平没有显着影响。这些结果表明，是否“为绿色付出代价”取决于公司规模。本文提供了一种资源论证，以解释大小公司之间的不同结果。