Research Summary This study reexamines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance by benchmarking firms against industry peers in a given year to identify best-in-class and worst-in-class firms. We also address distributional issues when using CSR ratings (clustering of CSR scores around the median and material differences across industries and time) and financial performance ratios (the possible influence of extreme values). We find that the best-in-class firms outperform their industry peers in terms of operating performance and have higher relative market valuations (Tobin's Q). When we control for endogeneity, we find that the significant relation between operating performance and CSR categories disappears, calling into question whether this relation is causal. However, we continue to find that best-in-class firms receive higher relative market valuations than industry peers.

Managerial Summary The conflicting evidence on the relation between CSR and firm performance may influence a manager's decision to invest in CSR activities and an investor's decision to invest in a firm. Our research provides managers and investors with important implications regarding the value of relative benchmarking. Managers should understand that expectations of CSR performance evolve over time and that investors place higher valuations on the best-in-class CSR firms within an industry.