The effect of academic top executives on corporate social responsibility: potential motivation and its outcomes

This paper investigates whether there is ethical or opportunistic motivation behind academic top executives’ (ATEs) engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) by exploring how ATEs relate to CSR practices and their consequences on corporate misbehavior and performance. We find that firms run by ATEs invest more in CSR. Moreover, CSR firms with ATEs are unlikely to be involved in corporate fraud and aggressive tax avoidance, especially when firms have low institutional ownership and fewer analysts and are located in low law enforcement and socially dishonest environments. We also document that the CSR performance brought by ATEs is positively associated with subsequent firm performance. Overall, our study suggests that academic experience has important implications for understanding executives’ ethical leadership and driving firms’ ethical CSR.