高管海外背景与企业社会责任

Executives' Foreign Experience and Corporate Social Responsibility

企业履行社会责任是与利益相关者建立互信关系、获取竞争优势、促进企业可持续发展的重要方式。在经济全球化和中国改革开放进程不断深入的宏观背景下,具有海外背景的管理者在企业中扮演愈发重要的角色,特别是对于新兴市场国家。已有研究探讨高管海外背景对海外融资、对外投资、跨国并购等的影响,尚无研究关注高管海外背景对企业履行社会责任的影响。基于高阶梯队理论,从高管个体特征视角研究高管海外背景对企业履行社会责任的影响。选取2010年至2014年中国沪深A股上市公司数据,结合手工收集的高管背景特征信息,使用OLS回归、倾向评分匹配法和Heckman两阶段回归方法检验高管海外背景与企业社会责任间的内在联系。研究结果表明,高管团队的海外背景显著影响企业履行社会责任。相对于无海外背景高管的企业,拥有海外背景高管的企业其社会责任评分更高、评级更好;当企业高管团队中拥有海外背景的高管人数越多、在高管团队中的比例越高时,企业社会责任表现越好;当企业面临的信息不对称程度更大时,高管能依赖用于理性判断的信息更少,此时作为高管认知结构和价值观念代理变量的海外背景对企业社会责任的影响更强。在解决了潜在的内生性问题和样本选择偏差之后,该结论依然成立。通过理论分析和实证检验,将高管海外背景的经济后果拓展到企业社会责任领域,为高管海外背景的研究提供一个新的视角,并从个体层面拓展了企业社会责任影响因素方面的研究,为新兴市场国家的企业社会责任作用机理提供新的证据。从现实意义上,研究结论为国家海归人才引进政策、企业高层次海外人才招聘和选拔提供了新的证据支持。

Corporate social responsibility（CSR） is a crucial way for companies to establish mutual trust relationships with stake- holders, achieve competitive advantages and promote sustainable development. With the trend of economic globalization and the in-depth process of China＇s reform and opening-up policy, executives with foreign experience play a much more important role in corporations, especially in emerging economics. Scholars have explored the influence of executives＇ foreign experience on over- seas financing, overseas investment, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. However, the impact of executives＇ foreign ex- perience on CSR still remains unexplored. From the executives＇ individual level and based on upper echelons theory, this paper investigates the impact of executives＇ foreign experience on CSR. Using data of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during 2010-2014 and hand-collected executives＇ background information, this study empirically tests the above research question by the methods of OLS, Propensity Score Matching（PSM） and Heckman two-stage sample selection method. This paper demonstrates that executives＇ foreign experience promotes CSR. Compared with firms without foreign experienced executives, firms with foreign experienced executives have higher CSR scores and CSR ratings. When firms have more executives with foreign experience and larger percentage of those executives in management teams, firms have better CSR performance. Al- so, when enterprises face greater information asymmetry, there is less information for executives to rely on to make rational judg- ment. In this situation, as the proxy for executives＇ cognitive structure and values, executives＇ foreign experience will have a stronger impact on CSR. The results are robust after using several robustness checks to solve the potential endogeneity problem and sample selection bias. This paper contributes to several streams of literature. First, it adds to the small but growing studies on the economic conse- quences of executives＇ foreign experience, little empirical evidence has been provided to investigate the relationship between ex- ecutives＇ foreign experience and corporate outcome although this question is both interesting and important. Second, this study emphasizes the important role of executives＇ foreign experience in emerging economics. Executives with foreign background expe- rienced dramatically different cultures and lifestyles during their overseas time. According to upper echelons theory, this experi- ence can affect executives＇ cognitive ability and ultimately influences companies＇ outcomes. Third, this paper enriches the litera- ture on the determinants of CSR from the individual level. Previous literature focuses on institutional and organizational level de- terminants of CSR. This paper tests the determinants of CSR from the individual level, specifically from the perspective of execu- tives＇ foreign experience. Finally, these findings provide implications for goverument＇s talent recruitment strategies and enterpri- ses introducing talents with foreign experience.