Restaurant corporate social responsibility(CSR) and chief executive officer(CEO) strategic decision

This study examined influential attributes of top managers on the execution of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This study claims that CSR is a risk-averse strategic decision. The main theoretical underpinning of this research is upper echelon theory. Upper echelon theory asserts that the outcomes of organizations are derived from the decisions of top managers. In order to validate the theoretical framework, this research chose attributes related to the upper echelon theory to account for CSR. Chief executive officer (CEO) represents upper echelon. Given the review of literature, this research proposes hypotheses using five attributes (e.g., age, tenure, academic education, the value of share ownership, and the value of stock option). This study employed various data sources (e.g., Compustat, Execucomp using standard industry classification code 5812, KLD, and Business week). Data was collected from thirty-two restaurants, and the study period was between 2000-2013. For the data analysis, this research executed a two-way fixed effect regression model. The results indicated that more educated CEOs implement fewer CSR policies, whereas the value of share ownership encourages the execution of CSR. Considering control variables, the results present that restaurants carrying out internationalization execute more CSR policies. In contrast, restaurant franchising is negatively associated with the implementation of CSR.