The CEO's tenure life cycle, corporate social responsibility and the moderating role of the CEO's political orientation

Despite scholarly attention on CEOs' influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR), the CEO-CSR relationship has generally been assumed as linear, and we know little about what factors explain variation in firm CSR participation over time. Taking into consideration the power and motivation of CEOs during their tenure life cycle, we argue that there is a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between tenure and CSR. We further argue that CEOs' political orientation will moderate this relationship. Our results show that CSR activity varies with CEO tenure in the inverted U-shaped relationship but the association between tenure and CSR changes dramatically with CEO political orientation. Liberal CEOs maintain higher CSR in their late tenure compared to conservative CEOs who reduce CSR.