CEO personality and language use in CSR reporting

Abstract

Chief executive officers (CEOs) hold the highest managerial authority in their enterprises. CEOs are responsible for overall organizational performance, which is influenced by their decisions. Recent business research has explored wide-ranging aspects of CEOs and their influence. Especially relevant to this study is research examining topics related to CEOs and corporate social responsibility such as the effects of CEO power and environmental, social, and governance disclosures on firm value (Li et al., 2018); the influence of CEO discourse on mining companies' social license to operate (de- Miguel-Molina et al., 2019); and the effects of CEO ethical idealism and ability on CSR disclosures (Everaert et al., 2019;García-Sánchez et al., 2020).Stakeholders' perceptions of organizational legitimacy (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975) relate to organizational survival. In the modern environment, CSR reporting represents the key areas of both legitimacy and potential CEO influence. In particular, CEO personality may affect stakeholders' access to CSR information by altering the extent to which CSR reports are readable. Extant studies have ex-

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