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Abstract
The purpose of this article is to study the relevance of ownership and top management characteristics in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Specifically, it is proposed that ownership structure characterised by the presence of large shareholders is related to CSR activities and that this relationship may be mediated by the CEO management profile in accordance with the Agency–Stewardship approach. The results of mediation analysis on a sample of 101 non-listed companies in Spain show that those with a higher ownership concentration tend to be run by managers whose profile is closer to the steward than the agent model and to be more involved in CSR activities. Our findings also support the existence of the suggested mediating effect. This article goes further than existing research on owners and top managers as determinants of CSR and unveils new ways to address this topic empirically.
Este trabajo estudia la importancia de la propiedad y la alta dirección para la implantación de la Responsabilidad Social Corporativa (RSC). En concreto, se propone que una estructura de propiedad concentrada en manos de accionistas significativos se relaciona con las prácticas de RSC y que dicha relación está mediada por el perfil de los altos directivos según el enfoque Agencia–Stewardship. A partir de una muestra de 101 empresas españolas no cotizadas, los resultados muestran que aquellas compañías con una mayor concentración de la propiedad tienden a desarrollar un mayor nivel de prácticas de RSC. Asimismo, nuestros hallazgos apoyan la existencia del efecto mediador del perfil del director general definido dentro del continuo agente-steward en dicha relación. Por tanto, este trabajo avanza en la investigación existente acerca de los accionistas significativos y los altos directivos como determinantes de la RSC y abre nuevos caminos para abordar esta cuestión de forma empírica.
Funding
This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [Research Project ECO2012-35439] and the Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León [Research Project LE004A10-1].
Notes
1. The response rate achieved was 4.3%, which amounts to a sample error of 8.65% with a confidence level of 95%.
2. Considering a possible problem of endogeneity between ownership structure and CSR practices, the latter refers to 2008 while ownership concentration and the control variables mentioned below are for 2006. In a cross-sectional analysis like ours, lagging the independent variables provides a possible solution to a problem of simultaneity bias and double causality. However, ownership structure proved to be relatively stable over time when the value given by each company for 2006 (the value used) was compared with that for 2008 (the year of the CSR practices) or with the average for 2005–2008; there were no significant differences between these three values.
3. The estimates were repeated considering firm profitability as additional control variable measured alternatively as economic or financial profitability (ROA and ROE). The results did not change and neither of the two profitability proxies was statistically significant. However, since the estimates can only be rigorous and efficient if there is a minimum of about 18–20 observations for each explanatory variable included in the models and bearing in mind the size of our simple, the decision was taken finally to not include this variable in the analyses. Moreover, although it might seem theoretically justifiable to consider profitability as a determinant of CSR, this is not so in the case of the type of managerial profile.
4. Robust models were also estimated considering a possible problem of heteroscedasticity, and the results did not vary significantly.