Seminar – Can Socially Responsible Firms Survive Competition? An Analysis of Corporate Employee Matching Grants

Professor Bruce Grundy, University of Melbourne

Employee matching grant schemes are co-ordination mechanisms that reduce free-riding by socially conscious employee donors. Their prevalence demonstrates that socially-responsible firms can survive market competition. When socially conscious employees are more productive or value working together, matching schemes can enhance employee welfare and raise more for charities without reducing investor profits. We document higher labour productivity at firms with matching schemes and that matching firms are more likely to be ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For”. The relation is robust to managerial entrenchment concerns and is not simply a reflection of productivity and preferences in the high-tech sector.

Speaker bio

Professor Bruce Grundy received his PhD in Finance from the University of Chicago. Before moving to the University of Melbourne, he was a faculty member in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago, Goethe University Frankfurt, Singapore Management University, and London Business School. He is a past Managing Editor of the International Review of Finance and a past Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Accounting and Finance. He has published extensively on momentum trading strategies, option pricing, dividend policy, convertible bond pricing and design, hedge funds, rational expectations models, and corporate governance. His current research interests include the valuation of real options and charitable fund raising. He has consulted for investment banks, corporations, mutual funds and regulators in Australasia, Europe and the US. Professor Grundy has won many teaching and research awards including a Geewax-Terker Prize, Batterymarch Fellowship, Hauck Award, and FIRN Best Policy Paper Prize.

This seminar is organised in association with the Cambridge Corporate Governance Network (CCGN).