The choice of corporate strategies that incorporate social and environmental aspects in
organizational activity is a necessary point in current market configurations. Therefore, the
decision-making process that encompasses these choices requires attention, mainly in relation
to understanding the factors that affect it. Specifically, this research focuses on the behavioral
attributes of managers that are related to decision making, such as overconfidence (OC) and the
chief executive officer (CEO) power. Therefore, this study sought to analyze the influence of
CEO power and overconfidence on corporate social performance (CSD). For this, the research
sample included 180 non-financial publicly traded Brazilian companies, from 2010 to 2022,
depending on data availability. The methodology had a quantitative-qualitative approach that
included the composition of a DSC measure, defined based on a checklist of items related to
institutional, social and environmental dimensions; the composition of measures of managerial
overconfidence based on the CEO’s behavioral characteristics and organizational and
remuneration characteristics; and a measure related to the CEO power, constructed observing
Finkelstein’s four dimensions. Subsequently, these constructs were analyzed using descriptive
and inferential statistics using multilinear regressions on panel data. The research results
demonstrated that, with regard to corporate social performance, the companies investigated
develop socio-responsive activities, but present an average adherence to the analyzed
indicators, the result obtained was similar to the Refinitiv® ESG Score for the same period. The
best-performing companies in the energy and sanitation sectors stood out. The evidence
obtained suggests that the behavioral aspects of managers are related to the corporate social
performance of Brazilian companies, in which overly confident managers positively affect the
corporate social performance of companies. Regarding the CEO power structure, it was noticed
that aspects related to expert and prestige power enhance the development of socio-responsible
measures. Overall, it was found that the CEO power does not increase this manager’s
overconfidence and, consequently, does not act as an effective moderating aspect of the
relationship between overconfidence and corporate social performance. Furthermore, the
findings contribute to the perspective discussed by theories of upper echelons, managerial
power and agency, by providing evidence of the relationship between managers' behavior and
the social performance of companies within an emerging scenario, as well as encompassing a
pandemic period.
|
