Political Ideologies of CEOs The Influence of Executives’ Values on Corporate Social responsibility.pdfVIP

Administrative Science Quarterly 58 (2)197–232 Political Ideologies of The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: CEOs: The Influence of / journalsPermissions.nav Executives’ Values on DOI: 10.1177/0001839213486984 Corporate Social Responsibility M. K. Chin,1 Donald C. Hambrick,1 and ˜ 1 Linda K. Trevino Abstract This article examines the influence on organizational outcomes of CEOs’ politi- cal ideology, specifically political conservatism vs. liberalism. We propose that CEOs’ political ideologies will influence their firms’ corporate social responsibil- ity (CSR) practices, hypothesizing that (1) liberal CEOs will emphasize CSR more than will conservative CEOs; (2) the association between a CEO’s politi- cal ideology and CSR will be amplified by a CEO’s relative power; and (3) liberal CEOs will emphasize CSR even when recent financial performance is low, whereas conservative CEOs will pursue CSR initiatives only as performance allows. We test our ideas with a sample of 249 CEOs, measuring their ideolo- gies by coding their political donations over the ten years prior to their becom- ing CEOs. Results indicate that the political ideologies of CEOs are manifested in their firms’ CSR profiles. Compared with conservative CEOs, liberal CEOs exhibit greater advances in CSR; the influence of CEOs’ political liberalism on CSR is amplified when they have more power; and liberal CEOs’ CSR initiatives are less contingent on recent performance than are those of conservative CEOs. In a corroborative exploration, we find that CEOs’ political id