| Abstract: | It is argued that one important reason for the inconsistent results about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP) is the deficiency of traditional paradigm of constructing the definitions of CSR and CSiR in revealing the actual situation. Based on the insight of Herzberg's motivation hygiene theory, we believe that the opposite of CSR is not CSiR but no CSR; the opposite of CSiR is not CSR but no CSiR. Moreover, we point out that those past empirical studies ignoring the visibility of CSR activities may lead to wrong measurements of the CSR actions. Therefore, we define CSR as firms creating wealth for humanity with minimizing negative externality (no CSiR /CSR) and maximizing positive externality (doing CSR). And with reference to the visibility of CSR, we divide CSR into benchmark CSR, implicit CSR, explicit CSR, and comprehensive CSR. In addition, we build a contingent relationship between CSR and CFP from the external perspective. |
