CEO and Board Influence on Corporate Philanthropy in China

• Main Authors: HU, Helen Wei, YOSHIKAWA, Toru
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: board of directors; corporate philanthropy; China; Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics; Organizational Behavior and Theory; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5367
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Corporate philanthropy represents an increasingly important firm decision to demonstrate its sense of responsibility to its stakeholders in addition to its shareholders. Using China as the research context, we integrate social identity theory and institutional logic perspective by examining the interactions between the different identifications that chief executive officers (CEOs) and board directors have with the shareholders, stakeholders, and government, which jointly affect firms’ engagement in corporate philanthropy. Using the publicly listed Chinese firms for the period 2007–2013, we find that a CEO’s identity with stakeholders and government promotes the firm’s philanthropic decisions, but their shareholder identification discourages corporate donations. Further, we find that the firm’s engagement in or disengagement from corporate philanthropy is often strengthened when the identifications of the CEO and directors are aligned, but weakened when the identifications of the CEO and directors are mismatched.