Using KLD data on more than 900 company's performance over a nine‐year period in seven areas of corporate social responsibility (environment, community, corporate governance, diversity, employee relations, human rights, and product quality), this research note re‐tests Michelon et al. proxies for prioritization and strategic approaches to CSR. The results show that, when a company pursues CSR initiatives that are linked to stakeholder preferences and allocates resources to these initiatives in a strategic way, the positive effect of its CSR initiatives on financial corporate performance (CP) strengthen. The analysis of KLD's variance and top tiers is thus proposed as a parsimonious way to measure when companies link their CSR initiatives to salient stakeholder preferences and undertake the corporate social actions that are ultimately relevant to the company's strategy and financials. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment