Factors Influencing CSR Spending in Indian Corporate Sector: An Empirical Study

Business and society are mutually dependent as the society creates business and the business caters to the needs of the society. Being a part of the society, it is the moral and legal responsibility of the business houses to serve the society in various ways. The present paper tries to analyse the influence of selected factors on the Corporate Social Responsibility spending by Indian corporate sector before and after the introduction of CSR Rules 2014 under the Companies Act,2013.. The Annual Reports of 57 companies of different industry groups out of BSE Top 200 companies were collected and the data pertaining to different variables under study were compiled. The data was analysed using Multiple regression to examine the influence of the variables like profit, capital, net worth and turnover on CSR spending before the implementation of Companies Act, 2013 and after the implementation of the Act separately. The final result is presented in the form of a table indicating the significant or insignificant influence on the CSR spending. It also appeared that there were significant improvements in average CSR spending and the consistency of spending (standard deviation calculated) after the implementation of the CSR rules.