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This study aims to investigate the impact of top management team (TMT)'s gender diversity on corporate social performance (CSP). It sheds light on inconsistent results in literature by testing the moderator effects of chief executive officer (CEO) managerial ability and corporate governance (CG) on such impact.

A dynamic panel estimator is applied to an international sample of 8640 firm‐year observations from 2013 to 2017.

The author finds reliable evidence that the critical mass of at least three women leaders has a positive impact on the firm's CSP. Obtained results suggest, moreover, the deterrence effects of CEO managerial ability and CG tools (board independence, board gender diversity, the presence of a corporate social responsibility committee and family control) on the women leaders' contribution to the firm's CSP level. These results remain consistent with alternative measures for women leaders and CEO managerial ability. However, findings are lost when women achieve the CEO position, the chairperson position or both positions, which imply that men and women leadership styles are closely similar rather than different. Furthermore, women leaders' effect on CSP seems dependent (do not) on the country (industry) which a firm belongs to.

From a practical standpoint, the study highlights the importance of fostering the achievement of a critical mass of women leaders and the combination of CEO managerial ability – educational/professional backgrounds – and CG attributes to improve the firm's CSP. The study has important implications for investors and regulators. If investors wish to increase CSP, they should ask for more gender diversified TMTs. Furthermore, this study supports regulators in their efforts to increase senior women's quotas by providing empirical evidence of better social outcomes under leader gender diversity. The study’s evidence is also useful for companies in setting the criteria to identify CEOs who can support their strategic decisions.

By studying the impact female leaders have on CSP under CEO managerial ability and CG as moderators, this study is the first to display complementarities and substitutions between CEO's managerial ability and selected CG attributes in the promotion of CSP by female senior executives. Furthermore, it fills the void on how TMT's gender diversity impact CSP. In fact, while it is conventionally considered that women are more likely to engage in socially responsible activities, sensitive findings of this study shed light on the brighter side of female executives when they achieve the CEO, the chairperson position or both positions.

This paper uses a stakeholder framework to review the empirical literature on corporate social performance (CSP), focusing particularly on studies attempting to correlate social with financial performance. Results show first that most studies correlate measures of business performance that as yet have no theoretical relationship (for example, the level of corporate charitable giving with return on investment). To make sense of this body of research, CSP studies must be integrated with stakeholder theory. Multiple stakeholders (a) set expectations for corporate performance, (b) experience the effects of corporate behavior, and (c) evaluate the outcomes of corporate behavior. However, we find that the empirical CSP literature mismatches variables in terms of which stakeholders are relevant to which kind of measure. Second, only the studies using market‐based variables and theory show a consistent relationship between social and financial performance, particularly those showing a negative abnormal return to the stock price of companies experiencing product recalls. Although this paper shows that the CSP construct is not yet well‐specified enough to produce stronger results, recent research suggests that much progress is being made both empirically and theoretically in developing valid and reliable measures of corporate social performance.

The purpose of this paper is to use insights from role congruity theory to explore how organizational context moderates the relationship between the representation of women on boards and corporate social performance (CSP).

The hypotheses are tested using a panel of S&P 500 firms observed from 2001 to 2011. The authors utilize the generalized estimating equations technique with Heckman’s two-stage approach to correct for endogeneity.

The findings reveal that four firm-level variables – voluntary initiative membership, deviation from prior financial performance, internationalization and product diversification – moderate the relationship between the representation of women on boards and CSP. These findings suggest that women directors have the ability to prioritize and advocate for social issues in the boardroom to a greater extent when firms provide a context that values their communal orientation. In contrast, the relationship between women directors and CSP weakens when the context encourages a focus on the bottom line.

This study reconciles mixed findings from previous research and contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between women directors and social performance by providing a theory-driven perspective of the circumstances under which women directors have a stronger or weaker impact on CSP. The authors extend role congruity theory by integrating contextual factors that may either diminish or amplify the effects of the expected directors’ gender roles on their behavior and decision making.

Empirical studies provide conflicting conclusions regarding the corporate social performance (CSP) of family firms. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the existing empirical evidence and examine the potential role of research design and contextual factors.

A meta-analysis of existing empirical studies was performed to examine the role of sampling, measurement and contextual factors in explaining the different and often conflicting results of empirical studies in the family business literature.

The overall relationship between family firms and CSP is positive. The relationship between family firms and CSP is positive for private family firms but is negative for public family firms. The relationship between family firms and CSP is positive when family involvement includes both family ownership and management as opposed to only family ownership or family management. Private family firms care more and public family firms care less about the community, environment, and employees than private and public nonfamily firms. The relationship between family firms and CSP is stronger in institutional environments with weak labor and corporate governance regulatory frameworks.

The operationalization of both the family firm and CSP constructs significantly predicts the magnitude and direction of the relationship between family firms and CSP.

Family firms should become more skilled at measuring and disseminating information about the firm’s CSP. Family firms should work to improve public perceptions about the CSP of family firms.

Policy should encourage family firms to remain privately owned by the family. Policy should also incentivize the involvement of family owners in the management of family firms.

Although several literature reviews address the relationship between family firms and CSP, this is the first review to use the meta-analysis method. The authors contribute to the family business literature by analyzing how differences in study-, firm- and country-level factors can explain some of the variance in the results of the studies in the literature.

This paper examines if gender diversity on corporate boards promotes corporate social performance (CSP) across industries and across countries.

Fixed-effect panel models are estimated using Europe-wide data from 2002 through 2013. Instrumental variable estimation and propensity score matching are also used to control for potential endogeneity.

Board gender diversity (BGD) improves environmental and social performance and consequently the CSP. Although the positive effect of gender diversity is prevalent across industries, the effect is more pronounced for firms in emerging markets.

The findings suggest that gender law that fosters gender diversity can promote CSP in firms, and the benefit can be enjoyed with just an introduction of one female director to the board. Promotion of gender diversity in Europe is most beneficial in emerging markets.

The results provide new insights to the literature, as we find that a critical mass of female directors on boards is not required to promote CSP. The research also highlights that BGD enhances CSP irrespective of the industry, and the effect on CSP is more pronounced in emerging markets where regulations regarding CSR are not so clear-cut.

Causality between corporate financial performance (CFP) and corporate social performance (CSP) has been extensively debated in previous research works; however, little research has been done to investigate the long-run dynamics between these two constructs. The purpose of this paper is to enrich the CFP–CSP literature by estimating the long-run equilibrium relationship between financial performance and social performance in the banking sector in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries over the period 2009–2019.

The paper adopts an approach that is primarily used in financial economics: first, the authors perform panel long-run Granger causality following Canning and Pedroni’s procedure to indicate the direction of the causal relationship. Second, the authors estimate an error correction model using Chudik and Pesaran’s (2015) dynamic common correlated effects mean group estimator to determine the sign of the relationship.

The present research findings prove the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between CFP and CSP, while indicating at the same time that panel Granger causality runs positively from CSP to CFP, which means that changes in CSP produce lasting changes in CFP.

The findings of the paper would guide strategists to build fit for purpose corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies in their firms and establish a continuous investment in CSR activities in the long run rather than harshly investing in CSR activities in the short run.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first one to address heterogeneity in long-run Granger causality tests to estimate the relationship between CSP and CFP.

Managers sometimes hide their level of corporate social performance (CSP) from investors, intentionally or unintentionally. The purpose of this study is to estimate such “hidden CSP” of firms.

In this study, it is assumed that Japanese public firms can be classified into two groups based on the difference in corporate social responsibility (CSR) awareness. Thus, the respondents to the CSR questionnaire survey are classified as the CSR-aware group, and the non-respondents are treated as the CSR-unaware group. It is further assumed that a significant relationship exists between CSP and a firm’s attributes, including financial performance and stock ownership. Under these assumptions, a model to estimate the CSP of non-respondents is constructed using the relationship between CSP and a firm’s observable attributes.

There is a significant latent gap between the CSP of respondents and the hidden CSP of non-respondents because of differences in firm size, foreign dependency of business and reputation and trust in the financial markets, rather than because of differences in financial performance. Insider-oriented ownership structures are negatively associated with CSP.

The estimation model developed in this study depends on a set of assumptions. In particular, a stable relationship between CSP and firm-specific variables, i.e. there is no structural change during the observation period, is assumed. Despite these limitations, this study extends the CSR research perspective, as it makes it possible to estimate the hidden CSP of public firms.

In practice, the findings of this study surface a part of the missing CSR that investors need and that could alert non-respondent firms to the importance of CSR strategy and related disclosures to adapt to rapidly changing social and environmental business settings.

This study is the result of academic interest in examining the missing information related to CSR activities to obtain an overall picture of the CSP distribution of Japanese listed firms as a whole.

This paper aims to close gaps in the current literature according to whether there are differences regarding the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and systematic risk when diverse regions of the world are considered, and what the respective drivers for this relationship are. Furthermore, it tests the robustness to alternative measures for CSP and systematic risk.

This study focuses on the impact of corporate social responsibility on systematic firm risk in an international sample. The authors measure CSP emerging from a company's social responsibility efforts by utilizing a CSP rating framework that covers a variety of dimensions. The instrumental variable approach is applied to mitigate endogeneity and identify causal relationships.

The impact of overall CSP on systematic risk is most distinct for North American firms and, in descending order, weaker in Europe, Asia–Pacific and Japan. Risk mitigation applies across all four regions. However, the magnitude of impact differs. While the most critical drivers in North America and Japan include product responsibility, Europe is affected most by the employees category and Asia–Pacific by environmental innovation.

The findings help firms to control their cost of equity and investors may identify low-risk stocks by considering certain aspects of CSP.

This study distinguishes itself from previous literature addressing the connection between systematic risk and CSP by focusing on regional differences in an international sample, using the very transparent CSP measures of Asset4, identifying underlying impact drivers, and testing for robustness to alternative measures of systematic risk.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the interrelationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR) isomorphism of headquarters (HQs) and their subsidiaries as well as corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) at the subsidiary level.

This study tested these relationships through canonical correlation analyses. The data used were drawn from corporate HQ and 63 subsidiaries, which were publicly listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange in 2007. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used in the study.

The results generally indicated that the isomorphism between the CSR practices of the HQ and those of their subsidiaries could impact both the CSP, especially the product and employee dimensions, and the CFP. No relationship was found to exist between the CSP and CFP.

Despite extensive interest by scholars and practitioners in the subject area, relatively little is known about the management of CSR by the multinational enterprises (MNEs) (Meyer, 2004), as the literature does not systematically examine the effects that occur on employee performance following the diffusion of CSR among the MNEs subsidiaries. Extending earlier literature on CSR, by integrating the effect of the CFP, the present study focuses on the effects of isomorphism between the CSR practices of the MNEs and those of their subsidiaries on both CSP and CFP. Further, the study examined the interrelation of CSP and CFP from the perspective of international management. Given the increased interest in corporate governance matters at the international level, CSR plays a central and fundamentally important role in the corporate governance of the MNEs because of both globalization forces and the pressures exerted by stakeholders. In this context, this paper is one of the first to explore the transfer of CSR practices from the MNEs to their subsidiaries. The effect of CSR on performance is an important research question, especially for emerging markets (Ibrahim and Angelidis, 1995; Waddock and Graves, 1997; Ghazali, 2007; Johnson and Greening, 1999). Despite the importance of this issue, however, until recently, only a limited discussion has been evident in the literature on CSR in the international arena with particular reference given to the emerging economies. Studying the effects of the CSR isomorphism on the performance in Turkish context is justified in three ways. First, Turkey is the largest emerging economy in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East (Tatoglu et al., 2003, p. 7). It presents the emerging nature of the market and the transitional characteristics of the institutional environment (Cavusgil et al., 2002). Second, the drivers for CSR in Turkey, such as the other emerging markets whose institutional characteristics and economic fundamentals is similar, are exogenous and institutional rather than endogenous factors (Ararat and Gocenoglu, 2006, p. 11). Excluding the philanthropic activities, the very first manifestations of CSR were observed in the business conduct of MNEs in Turkey (Ararat and Gocenoglu, 2006, p. 11). MNEs have a dominant and leader role in Turkey for CSR practices. Finally, the subsidiaries operating in Turkey are less likely to resist the transfer of the organizational policies and practices such as human resource management policies (Sayim, 2010, 2011) and organizational culture (Ilhan, 2008). In fact, they want to even transfer the policies and practices from MNEs (Sayim 2010, 2011; Ilhan, 2008). Therefore, Turkish context provides a good case to test the effects of the CSR isomorphism on the performance.

The purpose of this research is to empirically test the interrelationship between corporate social performance and financial‐based brand equity. This paper proposes that social performance leads to enhanced brand equity and, conversely, brand equity positively influences social performance. Firm size is hypothesized to play a moderating role in the interrelationship.

This paper uses cross‐sectional, secondary data of global brands. A system of equations is proposed and estimated using seemingly unrelated regression.

Prior social performance has a positive effect on brand equity, but brand equity only impacts future social performance among very large firms. The positive effect of prior social performance on brand equity is amplified in smaller firms.

Managers can increase brand equity by using corporate social responsibility as a strategic tool for positioning differentiation. To maintain competitive parity in social positioning and preserve brand equity, very large firms will likely need to ensure that they achieve comparable social performance as their global peer competitors.

This research offers a new perspective that looks at corporate social responsibility as a source and outcome of brand equity. The paper is the first empirical study that tests the interrelationship between social performance and financial‐based brand equity. The work offers global managers an improved understanding on how social responsibility relates to brand equity.