CEO education and corporate social performance: moderation effects of CEO characteristics and firm's governance quality

Purpose The authors examine if CEO education level and quality impacts firm's corporate social performance (CSP). Additionally, the authors investigate whether other CEO characteristics such as age, busyness, compensation and firm's governance quality moderate the relationship between CEO education and CSP. Design/methodology/approach The authors use panel regression framework amid set of controls for their analysis. The authors additionally use two-stage least squares regression (2SLS) for robustness tests. Findings The authors show that CEOs with a post-graduate business degree (PGBUS) impact firm's CSP positively, whereas other educational degree directly do not influence CSP. However, CEO's age, busyness, compensation and firm's governance quality are found negatively moderating such relationship. The results survive set of robustness tests, and results are consistent the roles of upper echelons in Indian firms' strategic behaviors. Originality/value The results seek for an integration of more ethics and social responsibility discussions in the different education levels including undergraduate degree in India to help engender a stronger sense of moral consciousness toward firms' stakeholders as the Indian economy continues to develop.