What kind of leaders can promote the disclosure of information on the sustainable development goals?

Abstract

AbstractAs the person responsible for a company's strategies and disclosure policies, the CEO is the architect of its CSR strategy. This paper analyzes which CEO's attributes influence the level of disclosure of information about business contribution to the SDGs. Based on the Upper Echelons Theory, a set of hypotheses on the influence of several CEO attributes (demographic and professional characteristics as well as personal traits) on SDGs disclosure have been tested in a sample of the leading Spanish companies for the period 2015–2021 using ordinal regressions for panel data. The results show that education level, nationality, and narcissism are the CEO attributes that significantly affect the level of SDG disclosure. Specifically, companies whose CEOs have a higher level of education, are Spanish (local), and are narcissist tend to disclose more information about the SDGs. This study aims to contribute to literature by providing new empirical evidence on an emerging research topic and by providing a glimpse into the CEO “profile” that may favor a company's propensity to disclose information on the SDGs.