| Corporate reputation is the inimitable and valuable intangible asset that has become an important resource of the corporate core competitive advantages.Therefore,it is essential for risk managers to protect corporate reputation from crisis events and reduce the impact of crisis events on corporate reputation.In this regard,corporate social responsibility(CSR)contributes to establishing good reputation,improving corporate image and enhancing competitiveness of enterprises.However,there has little research to investigate whether CSR can effectively reduce the adverse impact of crisis events on corporate reputation.Moreover,as CEO is the main body of strategic decision-making in taking CSR activities,it is worthy to study how the CEO hubris affects reputation risk by influencing the company’s participation in CSR activities.It has been generally believed that hubristic CEOs are likely to make strategic decisions such as M&A and environmental innovation,which in turn affects corporate performance.Though scholars have widely studied the relationship between CSR and corporate risk,no consensus has yet been reached on it.The stakeholder theory holds that CSR can reduce corporate risk,but agency cost theory believes that CSR can increase corporate risk.Besides,extant literature has not included reputation risk into the discussions of the economic consequences of CEO hubris or CSR.Based on the upper echelons theory,trait theory of leadership,resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory,this paper studies the influencing factors of reputation risk from the perspective of CEO hubris and CSR,and therefore seeks effective ways to reduce reputation risk.The method of literature research is used to build the theoretical foundation and conceptual framework,deduce the logical relationship among key concepts,and propose research hypothesis.After that,quantitative analysis is carried out to empirically test the theoretical hypotheses proposed.Specifically,the main content of this paper consists of three parts.Firstly,this paper takes the sample relating to reputation impact events from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the impact of CEO hubris on a company’s participation in CSR activities from the perspective of psychological characteristics.Also,this section discusses the influence of CEO hubris on the strategic decisions regarding different dimensions of CSR in the state of organizational redundancy.Secondly,this article explores the impact of CSR and its specific dimensions on corporate reputation risk and the moderating effect of corporate reputation by taking listed companies from 2011 to 2017 as samples.Lastly,taking the sample events from 2011 to 2017,the first part studies how CEO hubris affects corporate reputation risk and the role of CSR in the relationship between CEO hubris and reputation risk from the perspective of strategic decisions and corporate performance.Compared with the existing literature,the conclusions and contributions of this study are reflected in the following three aspects.Firstly,CEO hubris negatively affects the engagement of CSR activities.Furthermore,when the firm holds slack resources,the negative relationship between CEO hubris and CSR is reinforced.Conversely,when organizational resources are scarce,the negative relationship between CEO hubris and CSR is weakened.This finding explains why the psychological traits(e.g.,hubris)of CEO or manager have various effects on the engagement of CSR activities.Secondly,the participation of CSR activities can positively reduce corporate reputation risk arising from crisis events and the effect is especially significant for manufacturing enterprises.Accordingly,CSR could be regarded as an effective means of managing corporate reputation risk.In addition,the relationships between CSR specific dimensions and reputation risk are varied.The shareholder and social dimensions negatively affect reputation risk,while the employee dimension positively affects reputation risk.The impacts of the supplier,client and customer dimension and the environmental dimension on reputation risk depend on the specific kinds of industry.For manufacturing enterprises,the engagement of CSR activities related to supplier,client and customer is significantly negatively correlated with reputation risk.The environmental dimension of CSR in the whole sample can significantly reduce the impact of crisis events on corporate reputation.Besides,when the corporate reputation is high,the reducing effect of CSR on reputation risk is weaken.Through exploring the mechanism of reputation risk from the perspective of CSR,this paper puts forward new measures for managing corporate reputation risk and enriches the research on the economic consequences of CSR.Lastly,CEO hubris can significantly increase reputation risk and CSR mediates the relationship between CEO hubris and reputation risk.Drawing the insights of the effect of CEO hubris on strategic decision and corporate performance,this paper explores the internal mechanism between CEO hubris and reputation risk and highlights the important role of CSR in mediating the relationship between CEO hubris and reputation risk.This study makes a powerful supplement for the research on the influence of CEO’s psychological characteristics on the economic consequences of enterprises,and broadens the ideas for the research on the upper echelons theory and trait theory of leadership.As for the managerial meanings,this article provides some new solutions for managing reputation risk from the perspective of CEO’s psychological traits. |
