Chief Executive Officer Hubris and Corporate Social Responsibility in Korea: Moderating Role of Corporate Governance

The corporate social responsibility has become an industry norm, and the majority of companies have adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities due to institutional pressure. This paper suggests that chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics and governance mechanisms such as CEOs hubris, outside directors, and foreign ownership can influence a managerial decision of following the norm in adopting CSR. This paper argues that a CEO with hubris carry out CSR considerably less or more than a CEO without hubris because a CEO with hubris are known to have a tendency to refuse to follow the norm from institutional pressure. On the contrary, corporate governance mechanisms can guide a CEO to follow the industrial norm related to CSR because governance mechanisms tend to control CEO to reduce managerial uncertainty. The results show that CEO with hubris has a positive relationship with the degree of CSR deviation while governance mechanisms have a negative relationship. In addition, governance mechanisms negatively moderate the relationship between CEO with hubris and with the degree of CSR deviation.