Employee Political Affiliation as a Driver of Corporate Social Responsibility Intensity

This paper explores the connection between corporate social responsibility intensity and the political affiliation of elite management and lower-level personnel and offers evidence that CSR initiatives are frequently driven from the bottom up by employees actively expressing their sociopolitical views. While directors and CEOs play an important role within certain CSR dimensions, results suggest that employees are significantly more influential overall. A one-standard-deviation shift to the political left for directors, CEOs, and elite executives yields gains in CSR of 5%, 9%, and 3%, respectively, while a one-standard-deviation left-shift for employees produces a 33% increase. Findings may help to explain why similar firms engaging in comparable social initiatives can experience heterogeneous returns to CSR outlays and suggest that a corporate culture approach may be warranted in future studies