Impact of corporate social responsibility on corporate reputation and firm performance

This study is based on Sri Lanka, which has an emerging economy in the Asia Pacific region. Sri Lanka’s particular geography, political history, economy, and social and environmental concerns set it apart from other emerging nations. Sustainability disclosure is not compulsory in most developing economies, as economic development is considered to be one of the major concerns due to those countries’ political policies and goals. Sri Lanka is focusing on the challenges of long-term strategic and structural development as it attempts to become an upper-middle income country after decades of civil war. Some of the key challenges in achieving this goal are considered to be enhancing investments, containing human capital, realigning public disbursements, and improving the role of the private sector by increasing productivity and exports. The author’s decision to conduct a country-specific study is due to several reasons as selecting a specific country will provide a deeper understating of the research in question. Similarly, the study focuses on understanding how BODs and managers perceive CSR in the context of the Sri Lankan market and thereby analyses the link between CSR, CR and FP. Although such studies are conducted on developed countries to understand the perception of CSR, this study will examine the same subject from the perspective of a developing country. Furthermore, the perception of CSR is evaluated based on the managers in the top, middle and lower-level categories in the first 50 firms listed in the CSE in Sri Lanka.