General managerial skills and corporate social responsibility

Chen, Jie; Liu, Xicheng; Song, Wei; Zhou, Si

Abstract

We show that a CEO’s general managerial skills are negatively related to the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) undertaken by the firm. This finding is robust to alternative measures of CSR and alternative econometric specifications. The negative effect of general managerial skills on CSR persists when we attempt to address potential endogeneity concerns by employing propensity score matching and an instrumental variables approach. Further, supplementary analysis reveals that this negative effect is stronger in tight labor markets and in firms where shareholders are more short term oriented, consistent with the notion that the broader set of outside options available to generalist chief executive officers acts as a labor market mechanism that makes them less concerned about the firm’s long-term prosperity and thus more reluctant to commit to CSR.

Citation

Chen, J., Liu, X., Song, W., & Zhou, S. (2020). General managerial skills and corporate social responsibility. Journal of Empirical Finance, 55, 43-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jempfin.2019.10.007

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 10, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Nov 5, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020-01
• Deposit Date: Jul 20, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 20, 2021
• Journal: Journal of Empirical Finance
• Print ISSN: 0927-5398
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-1727
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 55
• Pages: 43-59
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jempfin.2019.10.007
• Keywords: Economics and Econometrics; Finance
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5809228
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092753981930088X?via%3Dihub
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: General managerial skills and corporate social responsibility; Journal Title: Journal of Empirical Finance; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jempfin.2019.10.007; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.