Do Executives’ Academic Experience Promote Corporate Take Social Responsibility?-Experience Evidence From Chinese Listed Companies

Modern enterprise is a kind of interest complex composed of many stakeholders.The profit of the enterprise depends not only on the operation of the enterprise itself,but also on the social resources occupied by various stakeholders.Therefore,if companies want sustainable development,they need to meet not only the interests of shareholders but also other interests(such as employees,customers,suppliers,consumers and communities).In recent years,Chinese companies still have a lot of problems of lack of CSR,for example,Sanlu milk powder incident,Master Kong trench oil,Shuanghui lean meat powder,and the recent Changchun Changsheng fraud vaccine incident,these phenomena or events not only caused serious harm to the public physical and mental health,but also has an deep impact on the sustainable development of the company itself.Under the background of the current Community have a high concern for CSR,it is still a problem worthy of attention to explore the influencing factors of CSR.The Upper Echelon Theory holds that executives,as the makers of daily business decisions and strategies,have a non-negligible impact on their business decisions.Since the reform and opening up,a large number of government officials and scholars in China have moved from government agencies and universities to enterprises or started their own businesses.This phenomenon is quite unique in China.Based on the background of China’s “Scholars doing business” and the Upper Echelon Theory,this paper use all the companies in China’s A-shares that publish CSR reports from 2010 to 2017 to study the influence of executives’ academic experience on CSR and the explored the regulatory effect of the nature of property rights between the two.At the same time,we further studies(1)the mechanism of the influence of senior management academic experience on CSR;(2)the impact of the competitive environment of the external product market on the relationship between the two;(3)the economic consequences of CSR.The results of the research show that:(1)the academic experience of senior executives can promote enterprises to actively fulfill their social responsibilities,that is,the enterprises with scholar-type executives have better social responsibility scores and higher ratings.(2)The positive influence of the academic experience of senior executives on CSR mainly exists in Private enterprises,and is not significant in State-owned enterprises.(3)The role of executives’ academic experience in CSR will be partly transmitted through internal control of enterprises,that is,internal control of enterprises plays a part in mediating the influence of senior academic experience on CSR.Scholar-type senior management improves CSR partly by improving corporate governance.(4)When the external market competition environment faced by enterprises is fiercer and the survival pressure of enterprises is greater,the academic experience of executives will promote the promotion of CSR.(5)Enterprises fulfill the social responsibility will promote the growth of corporate financial performance.The promotion of CSR to corporate performance will not only exist in the current period,but also have a significant impact on the financial performance of the enterprise in the later period,and the impact is stronger in the later financial performance,that is,CSR on corporate financial performance has a long-term and lag impact.The research contribution and significance of this paper is to study the influence of personal characteristics of executives on CSR from a relatively novel perspective,and distinguish the different influences of different property rights,thereby expanding the research boundary of the economic consequences of executives’ academic experience,enriching the literature on the factors affecting corporate social responsibility and the study of Upper Echelon Theory.In addition,this paper also reveals that there are some mediating effects of internal control on the influence of executive academic experience on CSR;it explores the impact of different market competition environments on the relationship between executive academic experience and CSR.The system is more in-depth.Finally,this paper not only studies the impact of executive academic experience on CSR but also studies the impact of CSR on financial performance,it makes the research content is more comprehensive.