CEO Femininity, Masculinity, and Organizational Outcomes: The Effect on Corporate Social Performance

How corporate leaders influence corporate social performance (CSP) enjoys long standing research interest. This study draws on upper echelons theory and cognitive, developmental and social psychology literature to investigate the influence of CEO femininity and masculinity attributes and behaviors on CSP. Both men and women can be more or less masculine or feminine. We argue that being feminine or masculine implies certain attributes and behaviors which inform ones’ likelihood of deciding on social responsible activities. We examine how femininity and masculinity are related to CSP and we consider the moderating effects of (financial) firm performance and firm risk. Using panel data of S&P 100 firms (2003-2013), hypotheses were tested on a sample of 846 firm years. We find support for our main hypothesis and the results for the moderating hypotheses show a weakly significant positive moderating effect of firm performance and a strongly significant negative moderating effect of firm risk. We attempt to study the implications of more ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ corporate leaders in the upper echelons. By doing so, we study the organizational implications of the intuitive reality of more feminine or masculine individuals without resorting to a binary notion of gender. Furthermore, we identify boundary conditions for this relationship. Our findings contribute to the literature on the microlevel antecedents of CSP. This study provides practitioners with the knowledge and instrumental tools to influence CSP.