Christian Religiosity and Corporate Community Involvement

• Published in: Business ethics quarterly Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 85 - 125
• Main Authors: Cui, Jinhua, Jo, Hoje, Velasquez, Manuel G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago Cambridge University Press 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Catholics; Charities; Community; Community involvement; Community relations; Companies; Corporate profits; Decision making; Employees; Generalized method of moments; Head offices; Hypotheses; Morality; Postal codes; Pro bono services; Religion; Religiosity; Religious cultural groups; Social responsibility; United States > US
• ISSN: 1052-150X; 2153-3326
• DOI: 10.1017/beq.2018.13

We examine whether religion influences company decisions related to corporate community involvement (CCI). Employing a large US sample, we show that the CCI initiatives of a company are positively associated with the level of Christian religiosity present in the region within which that company’s headquarters is located. This association persists even after we control for a wide range of firm characteristics and after we subject our results to several econometric tests. These results support our religious morality hypothesis which holds that companies headquartered in regions with higher levels of Christian religiosity will engage in more CCI initiatives. We also find that while Catholic and mainline Protestant religiosity have a positive influence on firms’ CCI initiatives, evangelical Protestant religiosity does not. This supports our differentiated responses hypothesis which holds that institutional differences among religious groups will produce different effects on companies’ CCI. This hypothesis is based on institutional theory.