Corporate social responsibility and CEO compensation revisited : do disaggregation, market stress, gender matter?

In this paper we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CEO compensation. Both CSR and CEO compensation are disaggregated into various sub-components. We also consider impact of the market crisis and the relevance of gender. Our results show that there is a negative relation between total compensation and socially responsible firms. However, disaggregation of CSR into its components matters. Dimensions of CSR that are relevant are employee relations, environment and diversity. Our results also show that the financial crisis and gender matter: once they are accounted for interactively in the model, the general relation between CSR and compensation weakens.