A Study On The Relationship Between CEOs’ Early-life Experience And Corporate Social Responsibilities

The important role of CEO in corporate strategic decisionmaking has received much attention from managerial practice.Previous research on CEOs’ characteristics focused on how CEOs’ demographic characteristics affect CEOs’ behavior and corporate strategic decisions.Recently,strategic management scholars have begun to pay attention to the CEOs’ early special experience and how it affects individual cognition and preferences,which in turn affects corporate strategic decisions.The first study focuses on CEOs with military experience(military CEOs),to see whether and how the military CEOs influence the corporate social responsibility undertaking with the boundary conditions from the perspective of managerial discretion.As a growing number of recent literatures provide evidence that personal traits and past experiences of both the CEOs and other senior executives affect corporate financial policies.Following these literature,top executives including CEOs and members in the top management team shall be considered.A service in the military is quite common among the population of top executives.The exmilitary top executives are highly compliant,dedicated to integrity and loyalty,and viewed as of high-ethic value and emphasis “service before self” compared to their non-military peers.Using sample covers all Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2020,we argue that ex-military top executives would engage in more CSR activities compared to their nonmilitary peers.The Shareholders concentration weakens the focal relationship,while CEO duality and organizational slacks strengthens it.The second study is to study the impact of early famine experience on the CEO and corporate strategy.Taking China’s listed companies from2009 to 2020 as a research sample,this article empirically studies the relationship between CEOs who experienced the Great Famine in China and corporate social responsibility in the early stage.We find that famine CEOs positively affects corporate social responsibility.The impact of continuous imprinting and the environment is specifically manifested as:CEOs’ relative salary weakens the positive impact of CEOs’ famine experience on the social responsibility,and economic policy uncertainty weakens the positive impact of CEOs’ famine experience on the social responsibility.And the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on the relationship between famine CEOs and corporate social responsibility is affected by the joint impact of the CEOs’ relative salary.The moderating effect is stronger;when the relative salary of the CEO is low,the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty and corporate risk-taking is weaker.The third study analyzed the internal motivation of CEOs with Sentdown youth experience to undertake more corporate social responsibility.We explore the impact that CEOs who experienced the Send-down Movement have on their companies’ social responsible behavior and the boundary conditions of this impact from the perspective of the upper echelon 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 social responsibility.For firms of state ownership,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.And combination of the two have played a significant role in moderating the focal relationship.In the fourth study,we examines how CEOs’ early-life experience of China’s Reforms and Open policy period may influence strategic decision on CSR.A longitudinal analysis of a unique,hand-collected dataset of Chinese CEOs in publicly listed firms from 2009 to 2020 suggest that CEOs experienced the preliminary stage of reform and opening-up era negatively influence CSR undertaking while the CEOs grew up through the profound stage take more CSR.We further find that CEOs’ overseas study experience weakens the negative impact of CEOs that experienced through the preliminary stage of Reform and Opening-up era and CSR whereas it has no significant impact on relationship between CEOs that experienced through the profound stage of Reform and Opening-up era and CSR.And market competition weakens both CEOs experienced preliminary and profound stage of Reform and Opening-up era’relationship with CSR.This research enriches and deepens the research on the upper echelon theory,and it also has certain practical implications for firms that hire top executives with unique types of early experiences.Through the exploration of the relationship between the CEO’s early special experience and corporate social responsibility,the use of a combination of theory and empirical analysis methods to systematically study the internal influence mechanism between the focal relationship,and conducting relevant research on the managers who have had special early experiences.And combined with the imprint theory to reasonably explain the impact of his early special experience on corporate social responsibility,it also confirms the generalizability of imprint theory in the field of management,and at the same time provides evidence for the impact of other early special experience imprints on managers’ behavioral decision-making.Secondly,based on a new perspective,this research reveals the influencing factors and mechanism of corporate strategic decision-making,attempts to open the "black box" of internal factors of corporate social responsibility,and perfects and deepens the theory of corporate environmental responsibility.By extending the impact of the imprinted personality traits and ability of the CEO’s early special experience to the category of corporate social responsibility,it consolidates and deepens the theory of corporate environmental responsibility,and at the same time provides a useful supplement to the imprint theory.Finally,this research combines the Chinese scenario to provide a unique argument for the theory of corporate social responsibility.Based on the background of China socialist market economy,it explores the relationship between the CEO’s early special experience and corporate social responsibility in a rapidly developing transitional economy.To provide unique evidence for the academic community based on the background of the Chinese system.At the same time,it is of great significance to examine the generality and universality of Western-based theories such as imprint theory,upper echelon theories,and social responsibility theories.It also provides guidance and research methods for future related research.