How Immigrant CEOs Influence Corporate Social Irresponsibility

Drawing insights from the place attachment theory and the upper echelons perspective, this study establishes a link between CEO immigration background and the geography of firms' corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) incidents. We theorize that immigrant CEOs tend to develop a psychological bonding with their homeland countries, which consequently stimulates place-protective behaviors towards their homelands, leading to fewer CSI incidents in the CEOs' homeland countries than others. We then explore two boundary conditions— rootedness and reinforcement—that can further enhance immigrant CEOs' attachment to their homelands and moderate the relationship between CEO immigration background and the geography of their firms' CSI incidents. With a longitudinal dataset of S&P 500 firms during the period of 2007-2020, we find that a firm led by an immigrant CEO tends to have fewer CSI incidents in the CEO's homeland country compared to other countries, and such effect is stronger for CEOs who immigrated as an adult rather than as a child and when homeland countries become more important (i.e., having greater sales growth) to the companies. Our findings provide important extensions to the migration research, the upper echelons theory, and the CSI research.