Are superstar directors effective in corporate social responsibility performance? An empirical analysis of sustainable development goals

In this paper, I adopt a hand‐collected sample of prestigious business award‐winner directors based on four types of awards and use it to represent reputable directors. I examine how awardee directors influence corporate social responsibility performance (CSR) using multiple samples. The results show that with award‐winner directors sitting on their boards, firms tend to have higher CSR scores. The findings are consistent in the propensity score matched sample and additional robustness tests. The findings suggest that reputable directors are effective in performing monitoring and advising duties, which in turn leads to better CSR performance.