CEO duality and corporate social responsibility: A moderation effect of founder CEO

With a panel of 6613 firm-year observations of NSE-listed firms during 2015-2020, we construct a corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement score based on entropy measures to analyse the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) duality on CSR practices in India. This study shows that CEO duality negatively influences the CSR practices of the firm. We also examine the moderation impact of the founder status of CEO on the relationship between CEO duality and CSR practices and find a positive moderation effect. We have also checked the validity of CEO duality and CSR relationship under high and low external and internal monitoring. The results are in line with agency theory and the Uday Kotak committee and suggest the non-duality structure for strong corporate governance. We also extend the study by analysing the relationship between CEO duality and CSR practices across different business life cycles. The result shows that the duality structure of mature and declining firms negatively influences the CSR practices of the firm compared to introduction, growth, and shakeout firms. This result suggests that CEO duality of mature and declining firms utilize their power to maximise available resources for their personal benefits at the cost of other stakeholders. Further, the findings are robust to applying propensity score matching, two stage least squares, and three stage least squares.