CEO power and corporate social responsibility

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) power on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

The authors use regression analysis to investigate the research question.

Using a 23-year panel sample with 1,574 unique US firms and 8,575 firm-year observations, the authors find a significant and negative relation between CEO power and CSR, suggesting that firms with more powerful CEOs engage in less CSR activities.

The results reveal that more powerful CEOs become less responsive to the needs of stakeholder groups, confirming the validity of the stakeholder theory of CSR.