CEO Materialism and Corporate Social Responsibility
71 Pages Posted: 14 Jun 2016
Date Written: March 23, 2016
Abstract
We study the role of individual CEOs in explaining corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores. We show that CEO fixed-effects explain 63% of the variation in CSR scores, a significant portion of which is attributable to a CEO’s “materialism” (relatively high luxury asset ownership). Specifically, firms led by materialistic CEOs have lower CSR scores, and increases in CEOs’ materialism are associated with declining scores. Finally, CSR scores in firms with non-materialistic CEOs are positively associated with accounting profitability. In contrast, CSR scores in firms with materialistic CEOs are unrelated to profitability on average; however this association is decreasing in CEO power.
Keywords: Executive materialism, corporate social responsibility, accounting profitability
JEL Classification: G30, G34, G38
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