Do Female State Officials Improve Corporate Social Responsibility in their Jurisdictions? A Disadvantage-Prohibiting Perspective

Abstract

While prior studies on how state officials affect firm behaviour focus on an advantage-promoting perspective, we propose a disadvantage-prohibiting perspective to examine the effects of female state officials on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We propose that the disadvantage resulting from a female municipal official's gender role may incentivize her to mobilize a firm's CSR to counteract such a disadvantage, leading to higher levels of CSR activities of firms in her jurisdiction. Our approach contributes to a new perspective on how political officials affect CSR. Results of our analysis of a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms between 2009 and 2019 support our predictions. The relationship is stronger in provinces that are more accepting of traditional gender roles and for first-term leaders. A supplementary study using a global sample shows the generalizability of our findings: firms in countries with female leaders have higher levels of CSR compared with firms in countries with male leaders.