How do chief executive officers with pilot status navigate through corporate social responsibility?

ABSTRACT

We investigate whether and how managerial risk-tolerance at the individual level affects corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance at company level. We use CEO aviation training as an observable ex-ante measure of CEO risk-tolerance. Contrary to a commonly held view, we show that firms led by CEOs with pilot status exhibit lower CSR performance. This finding holds even after controlling for CEO pay–performance incentives, military experience, overconfidence and other CEO and firm characteristics that prior studies document as affecting CSR performance. In further cross-sectional tests, we show that when a firm is R&D intensive, belongs to a high-tech industry, or faces fiercer product market competition, the negative effect of CEO risk-tolerance on CSR performance is more pronounced, suggesting that CSR may act as an insurance or risk-hedging tool. Overall, we provide evidence that risk-tolerance of CEO plays a significant role in shaping CSR performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility performance
• managerial risk-tolerance
• pilot
• CEO

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• M12
• M14

Acknowledgement

We thank Ray Zhang, Jamal Nazari, Dennis Chung, Rob Grauer, David Peel, anonymous referee, and participants of Ph.D. seminars and faculty workshops at City University of Hong Kong and Simon Fraser University for valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Hrazdil acknowledges financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 31-R640084]. Kim acknowledges partial financial support from the GRF of Hong Kong SAR government [grant number: 9042767].