An Investigation into Micro-level Corporate Social Responsibility: An Internal Stakeholder Perspective

Abstract

Scholars in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have primarily focused on how institutional and firm-level factors influence CSR performance, while individual-level factors (or micro-level), particularly the role of internal stakeholders, have received less attention. This is surprising because internal stakeholders, such as employees, managers, and executives, not only significantly influence CSR but are also among its primary beneficiaries. Within this limited literature, different disciplinary foci have led to fragmentation in the individual-level CSR (or micro-CSR) literature. For instance, corporate governance studies have concentrated on the roles of top management (e.g., CEOs), whereas organizational behavior research has centered on lower-level employees. Furthermore, while micro-CSR research has extensively explored the impact of CEO characteristics, such as past experiences and personalities, on CSR performance, the influence of CEO diverse experiences and others’ evaluations of CEOs on firms’ CSR performance remains unaddressed. To fill these gaps, this thesis presents three essays: the first essay is a computational literature review that provides a comprehensive view of how internal stakeholders influence CSR; the second essay empirically investigates how the diversity of CEOs’ experiences affects CSR performance; and the third empirically explores how others’ evaluations of CEOs influence CSR performance. To answer these questions, this thesis uses novel text-mining techniques, namely, topic models and psycholinguistic approaches. This thesis adds to the micro-CSR literature by highlighting the importance of a heterogeneous view of internal stakeholders in understanding CSR practices, as well as the relevance of CEOs’ diverse experiences and others’ evaluations of CEOs in shaping firms’ CSR performance. Methodologically, this thesis also highlights how text data and text-mining techniques can be leveraged to generate insights for micro-CSR research.