Abstract—Expenditure on societal purpose is two pronged in nature. Firm can do expenses either under compulsion of legal provision or for the purpose of philanthropy. Alternatively, review of literature and present business practices highlight the immense scopes of societal expenditure when it is coupled with business strategies. In this backdrop, six firms have been chosen randomly from a list of hundred firms who have spent on CSR. In line with the developed research query expenditure data on purely business and ‘business intention coupled with societal purpose’ for last 12 years have been collected. Based on regression model, comparative profit impacts of ‘purely business expenditure’ and ‘business intention coupled with societal purpose’ have been analyzed. During model development, problem of ‘serial correlation’ and ‘multicollinearity’ have been removed. In conclusion, it is observed that societal expenditure coupled with business intention could have alternative route to business.

Index Terms—corporate social responsibility, societal expenditure, business expenditure, profitability, contribution ratio, principal component analysis

Cite: Kaushik Mandal and Sujata Banerjee, "Is ‘Societal Expenditure’ an Alternative Route to Business Success? An Empirical Study," Journal of Advanced Management Science, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 31-37, March 2015. doi: 10.12720/joams.3.1.31-37