Fargo, N.D. — A paper by Yongtao (David) Hong, assistant professor of accounting at NDSU, and Margaret Andersen, associate professor of accounting, received "best paper" recognition at the 2011 New Orleans International Academic Conference hosted by the Clute Institute.

The paper, "Corporate Social Responsibility Performance: An Exploratory Study of the Impact of Industry," examines the strengths and concerns of the corporate social responsibility performance of firms and if there are discernible industry effects.

Corporations operate within the context of society, and as a result have responsibilities to be good citizens within that society. At the same time, firms face competitive pressures from the economic environments in which they operate. Do the different legal, social and economic environments faced by corporations cause them to respond to their corporate social responsibilities in ways that are related to the industry in which they operate? Using ANOVA, the results indicate there are general industry-wide patterns in corporate social responsibility characteristics.

The Clute Institute was founded in 1985 for the purpose of disseminating the latest scientific research on various business and economics-related topics. The scope of their mission now includes the dissemination of knowledge related to college-level teaching and administrative issues. To accomplish this mission, the Clute Institute publishes 14 academic journals and sponsors multiple annual academic conferences.