Korean Executive Trust, Social Responsibility, and Financial Performance: A Moderated Mediation Model

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of Korean executives’ trust on a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and corporate financial performance (CFP), which depends on their individual social responsibility (ISR). Design/methodology/approach - A survey was conducted, and 273 Korean executives were recruited. I used SPSS version 25.0, SmartPLS version 3.2., and PROCESS Macro 3.4. to analyze the moderated mediation model. And, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to predict and confirm the proposed relationships in the model. Findings - The results show that Korean executives’ trust is positively related to CSR. I also found that Korean executives’ trust is positively related to CFP. Moreover, I found that there is a mediating effect of a firm’s CSR activities on the trust-CFP relationship. However, I didn’t find conditional indirect and direct effects on the relationships among the proposed constructs. The findings overall suggest that Korean executives’ trust is such an important mechanism that will affect firm-level CSR and CFP. Research implications or Originality - Although prior studies reveal that executives’ trust in their subordinates positively influences cooperation, creativity, and innovation among subordinates in a team, it is still unclear whether executives’ trust in their employees or strangers impacts firm-level CSR and CFP. Moreover, not many studies examined the mediating effect of CSR on executives’ trust and CFP especially in the Korean context. Therefore, this study intends to fill the knowledge gap by focusing on South Korea. This study also contributes to extant CSR and trust literature, and practically contributes to executives, policy makers, and practitioners in South Korea.