The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Religiosity, Individual Social Responsibility, and Corporate Financial Performance in South Korea

The study investigates the mediating effect of Korean firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the relationship between Korean executives' religiosity, their individual social responsibility (ISR), and corporate financial performance (CFP). As executives lead the firms' strategies and policies, their religiosity or ISR may have a significant influence in attaining the firm's CSR and influencing CFP. The upper echelon theory, agency theory, and stakeholder theory are used to explain the link between individual-level drivers of CSR, a firm's CSR, and CFP. The upper echelon theory, agency theory, and stakeholder theory are integrated into the conceptual model, which explains the relationships between proposed constructs in this study. This study employs survey data of 421 Korean companies. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) technique was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The main result shows that Korean executives' religiosity and their ISR positively influence CFP when mediated by CSR. The findings of this study suggest that Korean executives' personal values such as their religiosity and ISR can impact the firm's CSR activities or financial performance. Overall, this paper responds to the recent calls in the CSR literature to examine the individual-level drivers from non-western contexts by shedding more light on the Korean context.