Lone founders, family founders, and corporate social responsibility

This study explores the relationship between founder CEOs and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We use 1093 firm-year observations and CSR scores (Environment, Business Behavior, Community Involvement, etc.) from Vigeo-Eiris, the leading European social rating agency. As lone and family founders develop differentiated and statistically significant behaviors toward CSR, our results suggest that founders’ social context is important. More precisely, we provide evidence that lone founders are less likely to invest in external CSR than are other CEOs. In contrast, their behavior toward internal CSR is not statistically different from that of non-founder CEOs. Conversely, family founders are more likely to invest in internal CSR activities. In addition, our results are strongly moderated by CEOs’ age, indicating non-homogenous behavior toward CSR over time and suggesting a tendency to instrumentalize their CSR investments to address personal and family agendas.