Considering the urgency of addressing grand challenges that affect human health and achieving the ambitious health targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the role of business in improving health has become critical. Yet, our systematic review of the business–health literature reveals that business research focuses primarily on occupational health and safety, health care organizations, and health regulations. To embrace the health externalities generated by business activities, we propose that future research should investigate the conditions under which business (...) articulates and participates in health challenges, engages in multilevel actions toward tackling health challenges, and improves health outcomes and its impact on the health of external stakeholders, including customers and local communities. We also urge business scholars to engage with the public health research community to increase impact. (shrink)

The relationship between a chief executive officer’s childhood experience of family decline and his or her firm’s social responsibility rating was explored using data on more than 1000 Chinese listed firms. Such childhood experience is shown to predict better CSR ratings. This may be because adversity in childhood shifts the cognitive map through accommodation process, and further fosters cognitive processing ability and a long-term orientation. Career variety and education level are shown to moderate the imprinting effect by altering its strength. (...) Career variety weakens the relationship whereas education level strengthens it. (shrink)

While scholarly research on the relationship between female board representation and strategic decision-making has gained momentum, employee policy outcomes have remained relatively understudied. Integrating theory from the ethics of care perspective with research on the glass ceiling and workplace voice, we seek to understand the circumstances under which female directors influence policy changes for firm employees. We argue that firms with increasing female board representation are more likely to enact human capital development policies benefiting firm employees. However, this positive relationship (...) will ultimately diminish as boards accrue an increasing number of female directors. We further predict that the presence of a female leader at the firm (serving in the role of either the CEO or the board chair) will moderate this diminishing effect. Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms, we find support for our hypotheses. The findings from this study provide evidence that while female board representation is positively related to human capital development policies, this effect is nuanced and impacted by the presence of female leadership at the top of organizations. Our paper extends existing research on the nature of female directors’ influence on ethical decisions, emphasizing the impact of these directors on employees. (shrink)

Ecological psychology regards culture as a response to the demands of the environment. As rice farming in history has significantly influenced the formation of human cultural consciousness, we investigate how the rice culture of a chairperson’s birthplace affects a firm’s CSR activities. Our main finding reveals a positive and significant correlation between a chairperson’s rice culture and CSR activities. Further analysis demonstrates that this positive relationship is particularly pronounced in private firms and family firms. We also examine the incremental effect (...) of individual management heterogeneity and find that the positive relationship is strengthened when the chairperson has a shorter tenure or higher level of education. Additionally, more developed regions help enhance this positive relationship. To address the endogeneity concerns, we adopt an instrumental variable approach and exogenous event analysis based on chairperson turnover. The results are robust to a set of additional tests. Overall, our findings document the benefits of a chairperson’s rice culture in developing countries like China and reveal how this benefit is priced into CSR performance. (shrink)

Interest in the drivers of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) is growing. However, little is known about the influence of a CEO’s childhood experience of natural disasters on CSR. Using archival data, we explore this relationship by offering three mechanisms that may account for how the CEO’s childhood experience of natural disaster is related to their CSR. More specifically, while prior research has established a positive relationship based on the post-traumatic growth theory, we show that the dual mechanisms of prosocial (...) values and a CEO’s risk aversion explain the positive relationship. We further find that the positive relationship is stronger (1) when CEOs have longer career horizons and (2) when community social capital is high. This study contributes to both research and managerial implications on the topics of CEO’s childhood experience and CSR. In particular, this study advances the upper echelon theory by revealing that a CEO’s childhood experience of natural disaster is a useful yet relatively underexplored variable that can help explain the substantial variations in firms’ CSR. Moreover, we emphasize that a CEO’s career horizons and level of community social capital are important variables that further amplify the effect of a CEO’s childhood experience of natural disaster on the firm’s CSR commitment. (shrink)

As environmental issues have become increasingly prominent around the world, corporate environmental responsibility has begun to attract more attention. As the decision-makers of firms, top executives play an important role in the environmentally ethical behavior of their corporations. Few studies, however, have explored the motivations behind corporations’ environmentally responsible behavior from the perspective of how CEOs’ early experiences shape their decisions. This paper explores the impact that CEOs who experienced the Send-down movement have on their companies’ environmentally responsible behavior and (...) the boundary conditions of this impact from the perspective of the imprinting theory. Based on the data of listed Chinese companies from 2009 to 2020, we have found that CEOs who were themselves “Sent-down youth” have a positive impact on corporate environmental responsibility. For firms with a higher proportion of state ownership and CEOs with Chinese Communist Party membership, the relationship between experience with the Send-down movement and corporate environmental responsibility is strengthened, whereas a higher level of market competition weakens the relationship. This article enriches and deepens the research on the imprinting theory, and it also has certain practical implications for firms that hire top executives with unique types of early experiences to promote business ethics improvement. (shrink)