CEO cultural heritage and corporate social responsibility

Authors

Md Showaib Rahman Sarker, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Ahmed M. Elnahas, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-23-2025

Abstract

We examine the impact of CEOs' cultural heritage on corporate social responsibility. CEOs originating from countries with high Power Distance have high CSR scores, while those originating from Individualistic and Indulgent cultures have low CSR scores. This effect lasts up to three generations before it disappears due to acculturation. These results are robust to using propensity score matching, entropy balancing, Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimation around CEO turnover, and a subsample of founder CEOs to address endogeneity and selection bias. Our findings shed light on the formation process of managers' intrinsic motives for prosocial behavior and hence improve our understanding of insider-initiate corporate philanthropy.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102857

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Journal of Corporate Finance

DOI

10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102857

Recommended Citation

Sarker, M.S. and Elnahas, A. (2025) ‘CEO cultural heritage and corporate social responsibility’, Journal of Corporate Finance, p. 102857. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102857