CEO moral foundations and firms’ environmental, social, and governance performance
研究CEO的道德基础（即道德直觉的先天来源）如何影响企业ESG绩效，发现强调关键利益相关方期望的CEO与较低ESG绩效相关，而关注个体福祉的CEO则与较高ESG绩效相关。
We examine the impact of CEOs’ moral foundations—innate source of moral intuitions—on firms’ environmental, social, and governance performance. Using a linguistic technique on unscripted texts spoken by 1860 CEOs of S&P 1500 firms over 5 years, we found that CEOs with higher binding moral foundations (i.e., focus on expectations of key stakeholder groups) are associated with lower environmental, social, and governance performance. In contrast, we found that CEOs with higher individualizing moral foundations (i.e., focus on well-being of individuals in general) are associated with higher environmental, social, and governance performance. Our study contributes to the upper echelons theory by providing evidence that CEO morality matters for environmental, social, and governance outcomes. We add to moral foundations theory by showing that a bi-dimensional lens on CEO’s morality (i.e., binding vs individualizing) reveals nuances on environmental, social, and governance outcomes.