IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/buseth/v35y2026i3p1573-1592.html

How Does CEO Career Horizon Affect ESG Engagement? The Contingent Role of Individual and Multiple Performance Feedback

Author

Listed:
  • Guocai Chen
  • Xin Sui

Abstract

Despite the growing emphasis on the CEO effect on ESG engagement, the role of CEO career horizon on ESG engagement is underexplored. Drawing on the principal‐agent theory and behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), this study investigates the impact of CEO career horizon on ESG engagement in the context of China, an emerging economy. We offer a contingent framework based on BTOF by discussing the contingent roles of individual and multiple performance feedback, clarifying how CEOs' perceptions of risk exposure reshape the association between CEO career horizon and ESG engagement. We derive three key findings employing a dataset of Chinese‐listed firms from 2007 to 2021. First, we identify an inverted U‐formed association of CEO career horizon‐ESG engagement. Second, considering the role of individual performance feedback, historical and social underperformance strengthen this impact, respectively, revealing that internal shareholders' pressure, induced by historical underperformance, and external stakeholders' pressure, caused by social underperformance, amplify CEOs' risk exposure, prompting their ESG engagement to reduce risk. Conversely, social outperformance weakens the benchmark effect, but historical outperformance has no significant impact. Finally, under multiple performance feedback, consistent outperformance (underperformance) weakens (strengthens) the effect. In ambiguous situations, the combination of social underperformance and historical outperformance enhances the effect, whereas the reversed combination has no significant impact. Our results contribute to the literature about the CEO effect on ESG engagement by revealing the private motivations of CEOs' ESG engagement and offering the CEOs' holistic risk exposure perceived mechanism in clear and ambiguous situations.

Suggested Citation

  • Guocai Chen & Xin Sui, 2026. "How Does CEO Career Horizon Affect ESG Engagement? The Contingent Role of Individual and Multiple Performance Feedback," Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(3), pages 1573-1592, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:buseth:v:35:y:2026:i:3:p:1573-1592
    DOI: 10.1111/beer.70002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.70002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/beer.70002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:buseth:v:35:y:2026:i:3:p:1573-1592. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/26946424 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.