Age and Corporate Social Responsibility : The effect of CEOs’ Age on CSR Performance and the moderating role of their national culture

Abstract: In the management literature, the debate on how Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a priority. Several aspects of the CSR have already been studied, for example, what are the corporate motivations for engaging in responsible activities. Recently, following the Upper echelon theory, researchers are trying to understand what are the top management personal characteristics that influence their decision-making. This master thesis aims to demonstrate that the demographic feature “Age” of the CEOs is a crucial factor in influencing their propensity toward responsible behaviors. Moreover, this study will investigate if the importance that theoretically, the new generation gives to the social and environmental issues, find empirical evidence. Using the global Fortune 500 firms as a sample, the relationship between the age of the companies’ CEOs and their CSR performance have been tested. Additionally, the moderation role of their nationality has been studied using Hofstede’s dimensions. The findings show that the younger are the CEOs and the higher is the firm’s CSR score. Instead, contrary to the expectations, the moderating role of the nationality found no significance.