It’s a big assignment. No one really knows whether firms benefit, in a business sense, from implementing practices that preserve natural resources, improve the human condition, and generally go beyond the letter of the law to address social ills. The rush of companies declaring themselves environmentally friendly — without actually changing business strategies — further stymies efforts to assess the bottom-line profitability of CSR.
PhD candidate Elise Perrault
Perrault is determined to try, though.
Brian Smith
She has already outlined several areas where hard data and more difficult-to-measure factors — from psychology to marketing behavior — intersect.
“Corporate social responsibility has so many angles,” she says. “You have to look at behavior inside corporations, and at the motivations of investors — not only to make a profit but also to gain more intangible rewards such as personal gratification.”
Perrault is using sophisticated models and data to approach the topic from several directions. One tack studies consumer motivations to see if corporate social responsibility changes their behavior in a way that helps business — for example, does CSR build customer loyalty? Perrault is also devising an experiment to quantify how much of a fluctuation in return rate investors will accept between companies that practice CSR and those that don’t.
A third project explores “socially responsible investing” by groups such as mutual funds that make CSR a prime criterion for investment decisions. Still another approach applies “stakeholder theory” to see how firms integrate CSR into the balance among investors, customers, suppliers and others. Each line of inquiry should supply Perrault with information to use in building a business case that quantifies how CSR fits into a company’s overall performance.
Perrault is not your typical PhD candidate, fresh out of university. After receiving her BA at the University of Quebec, she worked for several years in the Montreal fashion industry. The work included hosting a regional TV show and consulting with leading manufacturers on clothing design adaptations. When music sales went digital, she saw another opportunity. The company she formed translated song lyrics from English to French and Spanish, offering a marketing advantage for MP3.com.
But academia drew her back. Studying for an MBA at McGill University, she was inspired to seek a college-level teaching career herself — and began scouting for likely PhD programs. The approach to business education she found at Bentley University was very appealing.
“The business case for CSR is important at Bentley,” says Perrault, who also praises the interdisciplinary nature of the school’s PhD program.
The Power of Partnership Perrault’s doctoral study benefits from a Bentley partnership with State Street Bank, which has pledged four years of financial support, data access and information sharing on corporate social responsibility. [See related story on page 18.]
“State Street has lots of research on carbon trading, sustainability issues, and the U.N. Environmental Program — and they have the reach to involve Elise in strategic discussions with many other companies,” notes PhD program associate director Cynthia Williams, who has placed students in the bank’s Community Relations Department for many years.
“If the banks care about CSR, it happens,” Perrault says. “They want to invest in businesses that will give them a return. And we in academia can help. Our job is to observe and explain and, if we’re lucky, to predict. They can help us with data and support, and we can help them understand the role of CSR.” Gordon M. Hardy
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