In this paper, I adopt a hand-collected sample of prestigious business award-winner directors based on four types of awards and use it to represent reputable directors.I examine how awardee directors influence corporate social responsibility performance (CSR) using multiple samples. The results show that with award-winner directors sitting on their boards, firms tend to have higher CSR scores. The findings are consistent in the propensity score matched sample and additional robustness tests. The findings suggest that reputable directors are effective in performing monitoring and advising duties, which in turn leads to better CSR performance.
We explore the impact of prestigious director awards on effectiveness in setting CEO compensation. Consistent with the positive announcement effect for firms with awardees, CEO compensation aligns more closely with shareholder interest and includes enhanced risk‐taking incentives for boards with awardees. The effect is most pronounced when the awardee is on the compensation committee or a committee chair, and results are robust to a 2SLS estimation using an instrumental variable based on connections to prior award winners. We find evidence that both additional prestigious board appointments and enhanced scrutiny of firms with awardees are channels for improvements in CEO compensation.
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