A Study On The Impact Of Executives’ Background On Corporate Social Responsibility

As the country grows stronger,the economy is gradually shifting from high-speed to high-quality development.While the scale of the enterprise is expanding and the profits are increasing year by year,many kinds of problems have been exposed.From the previous “melamine-tainted milk powder” incident and Changsheng biological vaccine fraud incident to the recent "Laotan Sauerkraut" and "Shuanghui Clenbuterol" incidents,many unknown quality problems of some enterprises’ products have been reflected,and a series of bad incidents such as squeezing employees,cutting corners in construction and polluting the environment have emerged one after another.All these events highlight that there are still many enterprises with a lack of social responsibility,which has caused a negative impact on the society and the people that cannot be ignored,and thus promoted the attention of all levels of society to the issue of social responsibility.In recent years,scholars have gradually diversified their perspectives on corporate social responsibility.As the maker and executor of corporate strategic decisions,the senior management determines the direction of corporate growth and development,so the background characteristics of them are closely related to whether and how enterprises can better fulfill their social responsibilities.In addition,according to the internal control reports issued by COSO(Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission)and some scholars’ studies,the senior management is responsible for corporate internal control.As the method and measure of enterprise self-adjustment and control,internal control is an indispensable important link and system foundation of enterprise governance,which will affect the performance efficiency of corporate social responsibility.Therefore,whether there is a connection between the background of senior executives,internal control and corporate social responsibility,and what influence mechanism exists remains to be explored by scholars.Based on the upper echelons theory,branding theory,stakeholder theory and principal-agent theory,this paper selects 1,542 Chinese A-share listed enterprises from2012 to 2020 as research samples,mainly selects the academic background,overseas background and financial background,which are more likely to reflect their professionalism of senior executives.And combined with the internal control and ownership,the influence mechanism between the background of senior executives and corporate social responsibility(CSR)is further explored.In this paper,stata 14.0 is mainly used for empirical analysis of the data,and the endogeneity problems such as sample selection bias,self-selection bias and hysteresis effect are also taken into account.Heckman two-stage method,propensity score matching method,hysteresis treatment and alternative variable measurement methods are used in this paper to test the robustness of regression results.The above methods have proved the reliability of the research results in this paper.Through empirical research,the following conclusions are drawn:First of all,the academic,overseas and financial backgrounds of senior executives are significantly positively correlated with CSR,that is,the stronger the background of senior executives,the higher the level of CSR fulfillment.Secondly,internal control plays an intermediary role in the relationship between the background of senior executives and corporate social responsibility,that is,senior executives can play a positive role in the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility through internal control.Finally,compared with non-state-owned enterprises,the executive background of state-owned enterprises plays a stronger role in promoting the implementation of CSR.This paper enriches the research in related fields and provides a new research idea for the influencing factors of corporate social responsibility.At present,most researches mainly focus on the characteristics of senior executives such as age,marital status,gender and education background,or only select a single background for research.Few scholars to executives of academic background,overseas background and financial background under the same framework for the implementation of corporate social responsibility research,this article also has a certain theoretical and practical significance.According to the empirical results,we also put forward some suggestions from the perspective of the government,society and enterprises: Government departments should improve the corresponding policies and measures and supervision mechanism,create a good external environment,adopt rigid requirements when necessary to guide enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities;Strengthen the supervision role of the public on enterprises,formulate a reward mechanism to encourage the public to report illegal acts,and protect their personal privacy;Enterprises themselves should improve the selection,training,incentive and promotion mechanisms of employees,balance the proportion of executives with various backgrounds,strengthen the improvement of the internal control system,improve the sense of social ownership,and actively fulfill their social responsibilities.