A Study on National Institutional Characteristics and Corporate Social Responsibility
Asian Tax Journal Vol. 27 No. 2 (2026), pp. 43-65
Abstract
Based on Scott's (1995) institutional theory, this study analyzes the relationship between national-level regulatory, normative, and cognitive-cultural institutional characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. For each institutional dimension, the Control of Corruption (CC) index was used for regulatory institutions, the top corporate income tax (CIT) rate for normative institutions, and the Power Distance Index (PDI) for cognitive-cultural institutions. CSR performance was calculated as the arithmetic mean of the environmental (E) and social (S) scores from the Refinitiv ESG database. The analysis utilized a sample of 7,755 firm-year observations from publicly traded non-financial firms across 11 countries from 2008 to 2017. The key findings are as follows: First, regarding regulatory institutions, countries with higher levels of corruption control showed relatively higher environmental performance, whereas social performance was higher in countries with lower corruption control. This can be interpreted as an implicit CSR phenomenon where voluntary corporate activities are undervalued in environments where social responsibility is already internalized. Second, regarding the normative institution of statutory corporate tax rates, countries with higher tax rates generally exhibited higher CSR performance, indirectly suggesting that tax payments and CSR can form a complementary relationship under systems where tax burdens are perceived as social contributions. Third, in egalitarian cultures with low power distance (a cognitive-cultural institution), corporate social performance was higher, while no significant difference was found in environmental performance, suggesting that corporate environmental contributions may be influenced by universal global regulatory environments. These findings contribute to existing literature by providing an integrated analytical framework for CSR determinants through the simultaneous consideration of Scott's (1995) three institutional pillars. Furthermore, by disaggregating CSR performance into environmental and social components, this study demonstrates that each institution can have differential impacts on CSR domains and offers policy implications by reinterpreting the relationship between taxation and CSR from an institutional perspective using statutory tax rates as a normative indicator.
Keywords
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Institutional Theory
- Control of Corruption
- Statutory Corporate Tax Rate
- Power Distance
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