Ownership Comes with Responsibility – the Impact of Ownership Characteristics on CSR

This article provides a novel methodology to investigate the influence of share ownership on corporate decision making. Quantifying the characteristics of firms’ owners based on their measurable investment habits enables us to assess their predominant preferences. We demonstrate that a preference by owners for eco-social investments is a positive force in their firms’ CSR performance. In contrast, firms exhibit a lower CSR performance when owners show a higher degree of heterogeneity in terms of eco-social preferences. Furthermore, we find that universal as well as long-term ownerships significantly encourage CSR, hence confirming prominent theoretical concepts.