Effects of Strategic Corporate Philanthropy, Firm Competitiveness and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation of Food and Beverage Industry in Thailand

Abstract

Strategic corporate philanthropy has become a crucial field of scholarly inquiry in studies of organization. Numerous firms have paid attention to the corporate responsibility issues. Additional, strategic corporate philanthropy is a phenomenon of linking the business and social sector. The firms concentrate on protecting and resolving the problems by promoting activity corporate philanthropy. Nevertheless, there still philanthropy research has currently begun to consider the methods that the intersection of business aims and the bigger societal good displayed in this perception help advance the position of firm’s competitiveness.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationships among dimensions of strategic corporate philanthropy (SCP) namely, corporate giving, corporate volunteering, and corporate foundations, which have an effect on the consequence variables: firm competitiveness and firm performance. In addition, the association among the antecedent variables including altruistic motivations, social movements, government supports and board policy. Likewise, the moderating effects of mass media relationships between the three dimensions strategic corporate philanthropy and firm competitiveness.

The conceptual model is proposed by drawing on the stakeholder theory, motivation theory and competitive advantage theory are applied to describe the relationship among these variables. The population is the food and beverage industry in Thailand, and the sample size totals 251 firms. The data were collected by a mail survey questionnaire, and sent directly to the CEOs, general managers or corporate social responsibility managers of each firm. Hypotheses were tested by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis.

The results reveal that one dimensions of strategic corporate philanthropy (corporate giving) a significant role in firm competitiveness and firm performance. For the antecedents, the result indicates that altruistic motivations, social movements, government supports and board policy have a significant positive effect on strategic corporate philanthropy. Lastly, mass media have effects of the relationships between the strategic corporate philanthropy and firm competitiveness.

This finding provides a unique theoretical contribution in expanding the previous knowledge and literature review of strategy corporate philanthropy. Moreover, this finding indicates the importance of strategic strategy corporate philanthropy for increasing the firms’ competitiveness and firm performance. Furthermore, researchers should consider reinvestigating other industries to compare the findings and gains for greater generalizability in the future. Additionally, the potential discussion of the results is provided. Theoretical and managerial contributions are presented.

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