Research On The Mechanism Of Board Regulatory Focus Influencing Corporate Social Responsibility

The study of corporate social responsibility(CSR)has been a well-established topic among both academics and practitioners.While the role of firm leadership has been demonstrated to be a key antecedent for CSR success,how psychological characteristics of leadership drive leadership to promote or inhibit CSR remains unclear,especially for board leadership and specific CSR strategies.To address these gaps,the present study,built on regulatory focus theory and upper echelons theory,explores the antecedents of two CSR strategies from a socialpsychological perspective and at the leadership and board level in an emerging market.Using China as the research context,the thesis poses four research questions:(1)What are the major trends in the dynamic evolution of CSR and leadership?(2)How does board regulatory focus affect the level of corporate philanthropy involvement?(3)How does board regulatory focus affect the level of corporate environmental practice involvement?(4)How does board regulatory focus affect firms’ CSR strategic choices between philanthropy and environmental practices?To explore the first research question,the thesis adopted a bibliometric approach to examine and visualize the evolution and major research trends in the CSR-leadership domain(see Chapter 3).Specifically,the study maps the landscape of the CSR-leadership research domain and identifies major developments and patterns during the period 1994-2020 using a sample of 1,432 peer-reviewed articles.The analysis was conducted across three stages: the initial stage(1991–2003),the rapid development stage(2004–2011),and the maturation stage(2012–present).These stages helped to provide more fine-grained insights into research patterns over time.The results show an increase in the volume and breadth of CSR-leadership research in addition to revealing several publication trends.These included identifying relevant subdomains(or clusters)such as: board characteristics,responsible leadership,emerging country context,and cross-sector social partnership,for example.These major issues in the CSR-leadership domain inspired further exploration of independent,dependent,and moderating variables in the subsequent empirical studies.Consequently,the thesis investigated the antecedents of CSR from the perspective of board characteristics,and draw on an emerging country(China)as the research context,while the cross-sector social partnership might be considered as pertinent situational moderators in the relationships.Utilizing such findings,the subsequent research questions then investigated the relationship between board social psychological characteristics(board prevention focus vs board promotion focus)and the involvement and choice of two typical CSR strategies(corporate philanthropy vs environmental practices).Based on the examination of CSR and financial data publicly disclosed by Chinese A-share listed companies between 2007 and 2019,the results challenged the previous studies that had argued for an exactly opposite or symmetric impact of prevention focus and promotion focus,and found that board prevention focus and board promotion focus may exert consistent or distinctive influences on CSR specific strategies.This finding is in line with the notion that prevention focus and promotion focus are ‘regulated’by distinct and independent neurocognitive systems.Specifically,the first empirical study(see Chapter 4)used a content analysis approach to assess the board of directors’ reports to capture the boards’ prevention focus and promotion focus.Further investigation showed that board prevention focus exerts an inverted U-shaped impact on corporate philanthropic involvement.That is,a high board prevention focus can initially stimulate more involvement in philanthropy,while too much prevention focus by the board may produce the reverse effect.However,board promotion focus was not found to have a consistent impact on corporate philanthropic involvement.A lack of significance in the association between board promotion focus and corporate philanthropy indicated that board promotion focus had distinct goals and motivations for philanthropic involvement compared to boards adopting a prevention focus.However,in terms of the second CSR practice – corporate environmental involvement – board prevention focus and promotion focus presented consistent results(see Chapter 5).That is,despite their quite different strategic orientation,boards with a prevention focus and those with a promotion focus strengthened or enhanced firms’ involvement in environmental practices;interestingly,boards with a prevention focus had a stronger impact on environmental practices than boards adopting a promotion focus.Further,when it comes to the choice between the two CSR strategic practices,both board prevention and promotion focus privileged environmental practices over philanthropic practices but the impact of a board’s promotion focus was more stable(see Chapter 6).To further explore how to encourage the positive impact of board prevention and promotion focus on corporate involvement in philanthropy and environmental practices,the study drew on regulatory fit and considered the perspective of cross-sector social partnerships.This resulted in the investigation of three boundary conditions on the above relationships:interlocking directorships,corporate environmental commitment,and the number of nongovernmental organizations(NGOs)in the firm’s operating region.Interestingly,the results showed that the moderating functions of the existence of interlocking directors and the number of NGOs in a firm’s region were basically consistent across the three empirical studies.That is,these two factors both enhanced the positive effect of a board’s prevention focus on firms’ involvement in philanthropy,while decreasing the positive effect of a board’s prevention focus on firms’ environmental practice involvement.At the same time,the two factors decreased both the board’s prevention and promotion focus’ preference for environmental practices when choosing between the two CSR strategies.However,corporate environmental commitment indicated a slightly different moderating role.It enhanced the positive impact of board prevention and promotion focus on firms’ involvement in environmental practices while decreasing a board’s prevention focus’ positive impact on the firm’s involvement in philanthropy.Unexpectedly,it did not affect the preference of the board’s prevention and promotion focus on environmental practices.One possible theoretical reason may be that when boards decide whether to pursue environmental practices over philanthropic practices,they may compare the nature and consequences of the two CSR strategies based on regulatory focus,rather than simply taking into account commitments.