**1. Introduction**

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been described as the importance of pursuing environmental and social goals involving all shareholders and not just financial goals [1].

In a similar context, the concept of sustainability also comes up. Both CSR and sustainability are widely used terms. According to [2]*,* sustainability requires us to "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (page 41). Therefore, CSR is the contribution of companies to sustainable development efforts, taking into account the impact of their social and environmental actions and their contribution to the improvement of society as a whole and of the surrounding environment [3].

CSR has been studied over the years with a special emphasis on the benefits it does generate in the company's financial performance. Many authors who have addressed the relationship between CSR and financial performance have come to different conclusions. Many claim that there is a positive relationship [4–6], others argue that the existing relationship is negative [7, 8], while others claim that there is no relationship at all [9]. These differences may be due to the lack of theoretical support behind the hypotheses formulated and the limitations in the design and size of the sample and the variables used [10]. Also, Davidson and Worrell [11] state that sometimes doubtful CSR indexes or inappropriate techniques are used, which may contribute to the mix results found in the literature.

Our main motivation to study this topic is directly related to the growing concern of companies with the environmental and social issues, since there is a greater understanding that being socially responsible increases their reputation and image, thus generating short-, medium-, and long-term benefits. In addition, most studies on the relation between CSR and finance performance focus on a single industry or country.

Therefore, the main objective of this chapter is to analyze whether companies that pursue CSR-based policies have a higher level of financial performance compared to those that do not in an international sample. A separate analysis of this relationship will also be conducted and will be focused on the last financial crisis period in order to figure out whether or not companies sharing these environmental and social concerns have higher financial performances than their peers. To this end, 266 companies from 15 European countries were analyzed in a 10-year period from 2007 to 2016.

Results suggest that companies pursuing CSR-based policies have, on average, higher financial performance than those that do not. In the same way, during the period of financial crisis, companies pursuing CSR-based policies are found to have outperformed other companies in line with existing literature trends [12–16].

The study is divided as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature in order to have the theoretical support for the development of the hypothesis; Section 3 presents the sample selection process and the methodology used; Section 4 describes and analyzes the results obtained, and lastly, Section 5 presents the main conclusions.
