Chief sustainability officers and corporate social (Ir)responsibility

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fu, Ruchunyi; Tang, Yi; Chen, Guoli
• 署名单位: Shanghai University of Finance & Economics; University of Hong Kong; INSEAD Business School
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.3113
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 656-680
• 关键词: ATTENTION-BASED VIEW; chief sustainability officer; corporate social (ir)responsibility; TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM; upper echelons theory

摘要

Research Summary How will a chief sustainability officer (CSO) influence corporate social performance? Building upon the upper echelons perspective and the attention-based view, this study argues that while a CSO helps channel managerial attention to a firm's social domain, managerial attention is more likely to be directed to negative issues than to positive issues. In addition, such relationships are contingent on the focal firm's governance design and its industry culpability. Analysis of a sample of S&P 500 firms for the period of 2005-2014 largely renders support to our predictions. Managerial Summary While more and more firms start to put a chief sustainability officer (CSO) on its top management team (TMT), the implications for corporate social performance of CSO presence remain unclear. With a sample of S&P 500 firms, we find that the presence of a CSO increases the firm's socially responsible activities (CSR) and reduces its socially irresponsible activities (CSiR). Moreover, CSO presence has a greater effect on reducing CSiR than on increasing CSR. These relationships become stronger when the firm has a sustainability committee on the board and is in a culpable industry.