Politicians on the board

: a driving force for Corporate Social Responsibility performance of german DAX 30 firms?

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the following question: Do political directors on supervisory boards affect the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of firms? Based on identity theory, this paper predicts that politicians incorporate their political identity and social interests into their role as directors and consequently increase the CSR performance of the firm. Furthermore, this study explores whether gender diversity on the board of directors and the power of CEOs intensify this relationship. The empirical setting includes all 41 firms listed in the German DAX 30 between 2009 und 2020. In order to analyze the panel data set regression analyses are conducted. The results of the study indicate a non-significant result on the influence of politicaldirectors on CSR performance in the sample. A potential reason could be the often extremely high number of board members in German DAX 30 firms and the comparatively low influence of each individual or the low regional linkages of firms with politicians of this scale. Furthermore, additional post hoc analyses suggest that there are significant positive correlations between conservative as well as national politicians on CSR performance. This effect weakens under the influence of the moderating factors gender diversity and CEO power. Thus, these results indicate that the differentiation of political orientation, jurisdiction scope and other characteristics can contribute decisively to the understanding of the effect of political directors on CSR performance.

Date of Award	20 Oct 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Omar El Nayal (Supervisor)