This article examines the relationship between the global financial crisis and Corporate Social Responsibility reporting of financial services firms. We challenge the view in existing studies that firms, when faced with economic hardship, tend to jettison CSR commitments. Instead, and building on insights regarding the institutional determinants of CSR, we argue that firms are constrained in their ability to abandon CSR by the extent to which they are subject to intense public scrutiny by regulators and the news media. We test this argument in the context of the European sovereign debt crisis drawing on a unique dataset of 170 firms in 15 different countries over a six-year period. Controlling for a battery of alternative explanations and comparing financial service providers to firms operating in other economic sectors, we find considerable evidence supporting our argument. Rather than abandoning CSR during times of economic hardship, financial industry firms ramp up their CSR commitments in order to manage their public image and foster public trust in light of intense public scrutiny.

中文翻译：

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金融波动和公众监督是金融业公司 CSR 的制度决定因素

本文探讨了全球金融危机与金融服务公司的企业社会责任报告之间的关系。我们挑战现有研究中的观点，即企业在面临经济困难时倾向于放弃 CSR 承诺。相反，基于对企业社会责任的制度决定因素的见解，我们认为，公司放弃企业社会责任的能力受到监管机构和新闻媒体公开严格审查的程度的限制。我们在欧洲主权债务危机的背景下利用 6 年期间 15 个不同国家的 170 家公司的独特数据集来检验这一论点。控制一系列替代解释并将金融服务提供商与在其他经济部门运营的公司进行比较，我们发现大量证据支持我们的论点。金融业公司并没有在经济困难时期放弃企业社会责任，而是加强了他们的企业社会责任承诺，以管理他们的公众形象，并在公众严格审查的情况下培养公众信任。