Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Related to CEO Attributes: An Empirical Study

The purpose is to explore whether the CEO’s personal and professional attributes affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure or not in particular context of Pakistan. This article attempts to bridge this gap using the data set of 1,790 firm-year observations comprising of firms listed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange. For this purpose, the logistic regression technique is employed while taking CEO personal and professional attributes as explanatory variables and CSR disclosure as the dependent variable. Results indicate that firm size and CSR disclosure has a positive relationship. The outcomes based on binary logistic regression demonstrate that CEO ownership has a negative impact, whereas CEO tenure, CEO education, CEO age, and CEO compensation are the variables that have a positive impact on CSR disclosure. In addition, duality, ownership, and gender of the CEO are found to be insignificant. Evidence on CEO demographics and their impact on disclosure choice might be helpful for policymakers and regulators. This study lacks generalization due to the unique setting of Pakistan. Our research contributes to the body of knowledge containing upper echelons theory in several ways. First, it answers the call for an extension of research toward social responsibility disclosures and individual’s traits impact on it. Second, our study adds to the scarce literature available on CSR research and practices in developing countries. Third, it is one of the first quantitative studies in the specific context of Pakistan as data for these variables is not available in organized form publicly.