title: Mandated CSR expenditure: the Indian experience

authors: Mukherjee, Abhishek

subjects: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

abstract: The idea that companies service a broad range of stakeholders dates back to the 19th century but has gained increasing traction in more recent times. The question is what to do when the corporate sector fails to keep pace with societal expectations. The Indian Government’s response was to pass legislation on 12 August 2012 to make it mandatory for large corporations to spend a minimum of 2% of their profits on CSR activities, and then to amend this legislation 18 months later to specify the area where these funds must be allocated. In this thesis, we use India as an example of the success or otherwise of taking decisions related to CSR largely out of the hands of management. We analyse the impact that the mandatory CSR regulation may have on investors’ perceptions about what the resulting increased expenditure on CSR will have on corporate profitability, and we then investigate how the companies perceive the mandatory CSR regulation.
There are three studies in this dissertation. The first study uses the flow of information relating to the introduction of mandatory CSR expenditure in India as a means of measuring investor perceptions of the impact that the resulting increase in CSR expenditure will have on company profitability. We use both event study and regression analysis and find that when mandatory CSR spending was first mooted in mid-2008, investors expected that more CSR expenditure would increase future corporate profitability. However, by the time the legislation was passed in August 2012, these expectations had changed to the opposite view.
In the second study, we investigate the drivers and barriers of CSR expenditure, determine the attitudes of corporations towards CSR activities and the impact of making CSR spending mandatory. We surveyed 223 Indian corporations and find that the attitudes of companies on CSR spending largely vary with age, size and type of ownership of firms.  The results of this study indicate that the expenditure on CSR in India is very much dependent on the availability of funds. Also, we provide an explanation for why a large number of Indian companies failed to comply with the requirement under the legislation to allocate 2% of profit towards CSR.
In the third study, we test both the relationship between CSR expenditure and financial performance, both before and after the legislation was introduced. We use panel regressions to analyse the direction of the relationship between CSR spending and firm performance, and then the difference in difference regression analysis to examine the overall impact of mandatory CSR regulation on firm performance. Our findings suggest that the legislation has fallen short of expectations both in terms of the volume of CSR expenditure that has been generated, and the purposes to which it has been directed. In particular, we find that the law has weakened the previously positive relationship between CSR and profitability which can have a perverse effect on the willingness of companies to spend in this area. We conclude that great care has to be taken when implementing mandatory CSR if it is to be effective.

text: Mandated CSR expenditure: the Indian experience The idea that companies service a broad range of stakeholders dates back to the 19th century but has gained increasing traction in more recent times. The question is what to do when the corporate sector fails to keep pace with societal expectations. The Indian Government’s response was to pass legislation on 12 August 2012 to make it mandatory for large corporations to spend a minimum of 2% of their profits on CSR activities, and then to amend this legislation 18 months later to specify the area where these funds must be allocated. In this thesis, we use India as an example of the success or otherwise of taking decisions related to CSR largely out of the hands of management. We analyse the impact that the mandatory CSR regulation may have on investors’ perceptions about what the resulting increased expenditure on CSR will have on corporate profitability, and we then investigate how the companies perceive the mandatory CSR regulation.
There are three studies in this dissertation. The first study uses the flow of information relating to the introduction of mandatory CSR expenditure in India as a means of measuring investor perceptions of the impact that the resulting increase in CSR expenditure will have on company profitability. We use both event study and regression analysis and find that when mandatory CSR spending was first mooted in mid-2008, investors expected that more CSR expenditure would increase future corporate profitability. However, by the time the legislation was passed in August 2012, these expectations had changed to the opposite view.
In the second study, we investigate the drivers and barriers of CSR expenditure, determine the attitudes of corporations towards CSR activities and the impact of making CSR spending mandatory. We surveyed 223 Indian corporations and find that the attitudes of companies on CSR spending largely vary with age, size and type of ownership of firms.  The results of this study indicate that the expenditure on CSR in India is very much dependent on the availability of funds. Also, we provide an explanation for why a large number of Indian companies failed to comply with the requirement under the legislation to allocate 2% of profit towards CSR.
In the third study, we test both the relationship between CSR expenditure and financial performance, both before and after the legislation was introduced. We use panel regressions to analyse the direction of the relationship between CSR spending and firm performance, and then the difference in difference regression analysis to examine the overall impact of mandatory CSR regulation on firm performance. Our findings suggest that the legislation has fallen short of expectations both in terms of the volume of CSR expenditure that has been generated, and the purposes to which it has been directed. In particular, we find that the law has weakened the previously positive relationship between CSR and profitability which can have a perverse effect on the willingness of companies to spend in this area. We conclude that great care has to be taken when implementing mandatory CSR if it is to be effective.

year: 2017

title: Compressing semi-structured text using hierarchical phrase identification

authors: Nevill-Manning, Craig G.

subjects: computer science

abstract: Many computer files contain highly-structured, predictable information interspersed with information which has less regularity and is therefore less predictable—such as free text. Examples range from word-processing source files, which contain precisely-expressed formatting specifications enclosing tracts of natural-language text, to files containing a sequence of filled-out forms which have a predefined skeleton clothed with relatively unpredictable entries. These represent extreme ends of a spectrum. Word-processing files are dominated by free text, and respond well to general-purpose compression techniques. Forms generally contain database-style information, and are most appropriately compressed by taking into account their special structure. But one frequently encounters intermediate cases. For example, in many email messages the formal header and the informal free-text content are equally voluminous. Short SGML files often contain comparable amounts of formal structure and informal text. Although such files may be compressed quite well by general-purpose adaptive text compression algorithms, which will soon pick up the regular structure during the course of normal adaptation, better compression can often be obtained by methods that are equipped to deal with both formal and informal structure.

text: Compressing semi-structured text using hierarchical phrase identification Many computer files contain highly-structured, predictable information interspersed with information which has less regularity and is therefore less predictable—such as free text. Examples range from word-processing source files, which contain precisely-expressed formatting specifications enclosing tracts of natural-language text, to files containing a sequence of filled-out forms which have a predefined skeleton clothed with relatively unpredictable entries. These represent extreme ends of a spectrum. Word-processing files are dominated by free text, and respond well to general-purpose compression techniques. Forms generally contain database-style information, and are most appropriately compressed by taking into account their special structure. But one frequently encounters intermediate cases. For example, in many email messages the formal header and the informal free-text content are equally voluminous. Short SGML files often contain comparable amounts of formal structure and informal text. Although such files may be compressed quite well by general-purpose adaptive text compression algorithms, which will soon pick up the regular structure during the course of normal adaptation, better compression can often be obtained by methods that are equipped to deal with both formal and informal structure.

year: 1996

title: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand

authors: Mahuika, Nepia

subjects: Oral history

abstract: At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

text: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

year: 2017