• April 2013
• Article

We examine how organizational structure influences strategies over which corporate leaders have significant discretion. Corporate philanthropy is our setting to study how a differentiated structural element—the corporate foundation—constrains the influence of individual senior managers and directors on corporate strategy. Our analysis of Fortune 500 firms from 1996 to 2006 shows that leader characteristics at both the senior management and director levels affect corporate philanthropic contributions. We also find that organizational structure constrains the philanthropic influence of board members but not of senior managers, a result that is contrary to what existing theory would predict. We discuss how these findings advance understanding of how organizational structure and corporate leadership interact and of how organizations can more effectively realize the strategic value of corporate social responsibility activities.

• Article

In this paper, we investigate whether superior performance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies leads to better access to finance. We hypothesize that better access to finance can be attributed to a) reduced agency costs due to enhanced stakeholder engagement and b) reduced informational asymmetry due to increased transparency. Using a large cross-section of firms, we find that firms with better CSR performance face significantly lower capital constraints. Moreover, we provide evidence that both of the hypothesized mechanisms, better stakeholder engagement and transparency around CSR performance, are important in reducing capital constraints. The results are further confirmed using an instrumental variables and a simultaneous equations approach. Finally, we show that the relation is driven by both the social and the environmental dimension of CSR.

• Spring 2014
• Article

Organizations with social missions, such as nonprofits and social enterprises, are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. This article draws on several cases to build a performance assessment framework premised on an organization's operational mission, scale, and scope. Not all organizations should measure their long-term impact, defined as lasting changes in the lives of people and their societies. Rather, some organizations would be better off measuring shorter-term outputs or individual outcomes. Funders such as foundations and impact investors are better positioned to measure systemic impacts.

• July–August 2014
• Article

One surprising role of Nike's corporate responsibility committee is to provide support for innovation. More and more companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success—and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms, consistently ranking at the bottom of some two dozen possible priorities. Many years ago labor conditions in Asian contract factories prompted Nike board member Jill Ker Conway to lobby for a board-level corporate responsibility committee, which the company created in 2001. In the years since, the committee has steadily broadened its purview, now advising on a broad range of issues including innovation and acquisitions in addition to labor practices and resource sustainability. A close examination of Nike's experience has led the author to conclude that a dedicated board-level committee of this sort could be a valuable addition to many if not most companies in at least five ways: as a source of knowledge and expertise, as a sounding board and constructive critic, as a driver of accountability, as a stimulus for innovation, and as a resource for the full board. In an accompanying interview with Paine, Conway discusses the committee's creation and provides an insider's perspective on what has made it so effective.

• 2014
• Article

This study focuses on how and why firms strategically respond to government signals regarding appropriate corporate activity. We integrate institutional theory and research on corporate political strategy to develop a political dependence model that explains (a) how different types of dependency on the government lead firms to issue corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and (b) how the risk of governmental monitoring affects the extent to which CSR reports are symbolic or substantive. First, we examine how firm characteristics reflecting dependence on the government—including private versus state ownership, executives serving on political councils, political legacy, and financial resources—affect the likelihood of firms issuing CSR reports. Second, we focus on the symbolic nature of CSR reporting and how variance in the risk of government monitoring through channels such as bureaucratic embeddedness and local government institutional development influences the extent to which CSR communications are symbolically decoupled from substantive CSR activities. Our database includes all CSR reports issued by the approximately 1,600 publicly listed Chinese firms between 2006 and 2009. Our hypotheses are generally supported. The political perspective we develop contributes to organizational theory by showing (a) the importance of government signaling as a mechanism of political influence, (b) how different types of dependency on the government expose firms to different types of legitimacy pressures, and (c) that firms face a decoupling risk that leads them to be more likely to enact substantive actions in situations where they are likely to be monitored.

• 2014
• Working Paper

A long-standing ideology in business education has been that a corporation is run for the sole interest of its shareholders. I present an alternative view where increasing concentration of economic activity and power in the world's largest corporations, the Global 1000, has opened the way for managers to consider the interests of a broader set of stakeholders rather than only shareholders. Having documented that this alternative view better fits actual corporate conduct, I discuss opportunities for future research. Specifically, I call for research on the materiality of environmental and social issues for the future financial performance of corporations, the design of incentive and control systems to guide strategy execution, corporate reporting, and the role of investors in this new paradigm.