CEO Greed, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Organizational Resilience to Systemic Shocks

In this study, we explore how top executives affect the well-being of multiple stakeholders and long-run organizational outcomes. In the context of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), we examine how CEO greed impacts firms’ stance toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) prior to the onset of the GFC and how this, in turn, shapes firms’ fate during and after the GFC. We argue that CEO greed will be negatively associated with CSR, because in their unbridled pursuit of personal wealth, greedy CEOs are more likely to exhibit myopic behaviors and neglect investment in CSR. We also adopt a person-pay interactionist logic to theorize that the willingness of greedy executives to invest in CSR will be especially sensitive to different types of pay instruments. Next, we build on recent findings from research on CSR that suggest that stakeholder engagement is a defining feature of resilient organizations. We expect that, due to low CSR investment, firms led by greedy CEOs will experience greater losses in the short run and will take longer time to recover from the 2008 GFC. For a sample of 301 CEOs of public U.S. organizations, we analyzed the stock prices and found general support for our hypotheses.