In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the hard-freezing of defined benefit pension plans. Although cost savings associated with a pension freeze are expected to lead to improved future performance, prior studies do not provide conclusive empirical evidence to support enhanced firm performances following pension freezes. In this study, we examine how firms’ commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially their commitment to employee relations, affects their decision to freeze pension plans, and how firms’ CSR activities affect the association between the pension freeze and their post-freeze performance. First, we find no evidence that firms with a high overall CSR score are less likely to freeze their pension plans, but we find supporting evidence that firms with a high CSR score on the employee relation aspect are less likely to freeze their pension plans. In addition, we find that the pension freeze has a positive impact on the firm’s future performance, as measured by the return on assets, for the firms with high CSR scores.

近年来，固定收益养老金计划的硬性冻结有了显着增加。尽管与养老金冻结相关的成本节省有望改善未来的绩效，但是先前的研究并未提供结论性的经验证据来支持养老金冻结后企业绩效的提高。在本研究中，我们研究了企业对企业社会责任（CSR）的承诺，特别是对员工关系的承诺，如何影响其冻结养老金计划的决定，以及企业的CSR活动如何影响养老金冻结与他们的退休后工作之间的关联。冻结性能。首先，我们没有证据表明总体企业社会责任得分较高的公司冻结养老金计划的可能性较小，但是我们发现有支持性的证据表明，在员工关系方面具有较高CSR分数的公司不太可能冻结其退休金计划。此外，我们发现，对于拥有高CSR评分的公司，养老金冻结对公司的未来绩效有积极影响，以资产回报率衡量。