Robert H. Davidson is Assistant Professor at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. This post is based on a recent paper by Professor Davidson; Aiyesha Dey, Associate Professor of Accounting at University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management; and Abbie J. Smith, Professor of Accounting at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Fortune Global 500 firms spend over $15 billion a year on corporate philanthropy and countless hours and dollars on a host of social responsibility (CSR) activities. Corporate social responsibility refers to “managements’ obligation to set policies, make decisions and follow courses of action beyond the requirements of the law that are desirable in terms of the values and objectives of society.” Further, the ethical component of CSR proposed in the literature implies that morals or ethics of individual managers are an important factor in a firm’s CSR practices. This aspect of CSR brings into focus the point that key individuals may be instrumental in formulating and implementing firms’ CSR policy. This raises the question of the importance of individuals’ values, traits and motives in pursuing CSR. In our paper, CEO Materialism and Corporate Social Responsibility, we take a first step in this direction, and examine how CEO behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their materialism (relative ownership of luxury goods) is related to their firms’ CSR performance.
