Military Experience and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from China

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how moral attitudes across top executives related to CSR practices and what consequences it has on earnings quality. We find that firms run by military executives are significantly more likely to engage in CSR activities. Specifically, military executives have a moral obligation to put extra weight on caring staff, protecting customer, supplier rights and environment, while military experience have little influence on the firms’ shareholders value and social contributions. We further document that these CSR activities driven by ethics motivations of military executives appear to lead to high quality financial reports in their firms. Our findings suggest ethical concerns are likely to drive military executives to perform CSR, and thus tend to constrain earnings management. Overall, this study adds evidence to the growing literature regarding the influence of top executives’ personal characteristics on corporate outcomes, as well as enriching knowledge about firms’ business practices and reporting behaviors in light of CSR.