The Impact And Mechanism Of Executive Reputation On Corporate Social Responsibility

Traditional enterprise theory regards the enterprise as a professional organization whose main goal is to maximize economic profit,and all the management and governance behaviors are to achieve the ultimate goal.Under the complex business environment with both opportunities and challenges,the links between stakeholders have been further strengthened.In order to meet the needs of the development of the times,we should break through the traditional thinking of taking profit as the only value-oriented and attach importance to the contribution of enterprises to society as a whole,making it one of the essential tasks for enterprises to undertake social responsibilities.Existing studies have focused on the relationship between personality traits of senior executives and corporate social responsibility,ignoring the important role of reputation in it.Reputation can show the capabilities of executives and the operating conditions of the company,send positive signals to the external environment and produce significant governance effects in practice.Combined with this background,what impact will executive reputation have on corporate social responsibility?Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019,this paper conducts theoretical analysis and empirical test on the relationship between executive reputation and corporate social responsibility.Further,it explores the mediating mechanism of dual agency cost and the moderating role of redundant resources as internal situational factors.The results show that:Firstly,there is a significant positive correlation between executive reputation and corporate social responsibility.The higher the reputation of an executive is,the higher the level of social responsibility commitment of the enterprise he/she works for.Secondly,the dual agency cost plays a mediating role in the relationship between executive reputation and corporate social responsibility.The reputation mechanism can reduce the cost of the first type of agency by promoting the convergence of interests between principal and agent,and increase the investment in social responsibility.Executive reputation inhibits the collusion between management and controlling shareholders,reduces the second type of agency cost,and enables executives to play a positive governance effect and enhance corporate social responsibility.Thirdly,the more redundant resources inside an enterprise,the stronger the impact of executive reputation on corporate social responsibility.The absorbed redundant resources that have been internalized into the business process can improve the ability of enterprises to resist risks.In contrast,the unabsorbed redundant resources that can be easily identified and transformed can be used as the capital guarantee of corporate strategic activities.Both of them can positively regulate the impact of executive reputation on corporate social responsibility.In the extended analysis part,this paper explores the relationship between executive reputation and corporate reputation and its specific influencing mechanism,and further verifies the effective contract hypothesis of reputation.To be specific,executives with good reputations will shoulder more social responsibilities and transform their reputation capital into the enterprise’s reputation capital.This paper has important theoretical and practical significance.Firstly,this paper supplements the existing theoretical and empirical research on improving the effect of executive reputation governance,establish a model to study the relationship between executive reputation and corporate social responsibility and provides relevant evidence for executive reputation effect.Secondly,this paper provides theoretical support for the study of social responsibility,and also provides a reference for the way of reputation incentive for enterprises to better fulfill their social responsibility.Finally,the study of factors affecting mechanism and situations for enterprises to reduce agency cost,correct the reference for the treatment of redundant resources,studies have shown that executives of the accumulation of reputation are not only beneficial to reduce the cost of enterprise internal double agent will also be able to make full use of redundant resources risk buffer function,help enterprise positive social responsibility,but is also conducive to the realization of enterprise value and long-term development.