This study explores how CEOs' insurance behaviours outside the workplace, as measured by the premium rates of their self-purchasing critical illness insurance, are related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We show that such behaviours (i.e. the CEO-insurance effect) capture the variation in CEOs' risk aversion and are positively associated with CSR performance. We also find that our results align with the risk mitigation hypothesis rather than the agency conflict hypothesis. Additional analysis reveals that the main effect is more pronounced among firms in uncertain environments. Further evidence shows that accounting conservatism and internal control are potential channels through which the CEO-insurance effect boosts CSR performance. Collectively, our evidence contributes to research on managerial risk attitude, heterogeneity in CSR policies and 'off-the-job' determinants of CEOs' styles.
This paper investigates whether and how employee quality affects corporate social responsibility (CSR). We find that firms with a highquality workforce are associated with more CSR engagement. We use an exogenous shock of household registration reform in China to employee mobility to support a causal inference. The main effect is more pronounced among firms whose human capital has more value-added (e.g., firms in high-tech industries, firms with more R&D investment, and patent filings). Further, we show that employees' bargaining power and monitoring role are potential channels through which employee quality affects CSR. Finally, our results also demonstrate that the employee quality effect is economically sizeable and generates positive externalities on future financial performance and firm value.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.