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Purpose This paper aims to examine how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power affects firm-level labor productivity. Design/methodology/approach The authors rely on regression analysis to examine the relation between CEO power and labor productivity. Findings Following prior research (i.e. the sequential rank order tournament theory), the authors predict that powerful CEOs lead to high labor productivity. They find a significant and positive relationship between CEO power and labor productivity. They further decompose labor productivity into labor efficiency and labor cost components and find a positive (negative) relationship between CEO power and labor efficiency (cost) component, suggesting that more powerful CEOs better manage labor efficiency and control labor cost. The results are also robust to various additional tests. Originality/value This study contributes to two streams of research: the CEO power literature in finance and the labor productivity and cost literature in accounting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study that performs a direct empirical test on the relation between CEO power and labor productivity.

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Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of a chief executive officer (CEO) social network centrality on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Design/methodology/approach This study carries out a multivariate linear regression analysis on a panel data sample of 11,507 firm-year observations (representing 1,386 unique US firms) from 2004 to 2014. Findings This paper finds a significant negative relation between CEO network centrality and irresponsible CSR performance (measured as CSR concerns). The findings suggest that better-connected CEOs can better mitigate CSR concerns or weaknesses, leading to improved overall CSR performance of a firm. Originality/value This is the first study that directly examines the empirical link between CEO centrality and CSR performance.