McWilliams, Siegel, and Teoh (1999)

McWilliams, Abagail, Donald Siegel, and Siew Hong Teoh. "Issues in the Use of Event Study Methodology: A Critical Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Studies." Organizational Research Methods, October 1999.

From the authors’ abstract: “Organizational researchers are increasingly using the event study methodology to assess the effect of strategic decisions on firm performance. Unfortunately, event studies alone are inadequate because, at best, they provide estimates of the shortrun impact on shareholders only and not on other corporate stakeholders. Furthermore, event study findings are sensitive to even small changes in research design. The authors illustrate the lack of robustness by examining five recent studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that report conflicting results. They conclude that these contradictory findings arise from significant differences in research design and implementation.”

LK comment: Compares five event studies of the South Africa shareholder boycott conducted between 1994 and 1999, including Teoh, Welch, and Wazzan (1999). Finds that the conclusions of the studies differ because of variations in research design and implementation. The authors argue that the event study methodology should be used sparing in the study of corporate social responsibility because of the difficulty of controlling for confounding events, and because the event study approach focuses on only one stakeholder group, shareholders.

Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109442819924002