The Effects of CEO Awards on Corporate Social Responsibility Focus

Integrating stakeholder agency theory with the instrumental corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, this study explores how award-winning CEOs consider personal interests and balance competing stakeholder demands when they decide between external and internal CSR, or CSR focus. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we find that after winning a prestigious media award, CEOs engage in more external CSR, which is more visible to the public, and less internal CSR, which is less likely to attract public attention. We find that such an influence on CSR focus is more salient for award-winning CEOs with lower stock ownership (i.e. a stronger self-serving motivation) than for CEOs with higher stock ownership. Furthermore, we explore the role of stakeholder salience in modifying award-winning CEOs’ decisions about CSR focus. When external stakeholder salience is higher (e.g. higher media coverage), award-winning CEOs' manipulation of CSR focus by increasing external CSR and decreasing internal CSR is more salient. However, such effects can be dampened when internal stakeholder salience is higher (e.g. higher human capital intensity). Our study contributes to the instrumental CSR literature by demonstrating the underlying processes and boundary conditions of how awards affect CEOs' balance of stakeholder salience.