Abstract:
The corporate business organizations tend to have more CSR activities, as a strategy
for future benefits. But it is still unclear that whether these CSR activities add value
to the firm performance on which this study mainly focused. The purpose of this study
is to give both companies and investors a better insight into CSR efforts and show
how these efforts may add value to the business. Hence, the results are valuable for
both companies and investors, as well as for other stakeholders who are benefited
from companies’ CSR efforts.
This study gives an opinion about relationship between corporate social responsibility
activities and financial performance of listed manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka.
Data was collected from secondary sources such as annual reports, sustainability
report and other related publications. Sample size of the study is all listed
manufacturing companies in Colombo Stock Exchange and period covered from this
study is from 2012-2017. Independent variable was measurement based on CSR
checklist issued by Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. It includes measures of
management involvement, market place, workplace CSR Practices, governance and
legal issues, employee welfare, human resource practices, social and community. To
measure the firm financial performance Return on Assets (ROA) was used. In
describing the relationship between company CSR and performance descriptive
analysis, correlation and Regression analysis are employed as statistical tools to
analyze the data. The results show that there is a significant positive relationship
between CSR activities and financial performance of listed manufacturing companies
in Sri Lanka indicating that CSR acting as a tool for increasing company performance
