Want to work for a company that offers child care, flexible hours, employee profit-sharing, cares about the environment and is generally good to its employees?
Then find one with a CEO who has daughters – preferably one whose first-born is a daughter - because new research into major U.S. corporations shows leaders who are the fathers of daughters are more inclined to be nicer to their employees and spend more time and money on corporate social responsibility (
Prior research has already demonstrated that judges with daughters tend to vote more liberally, and congressmembers with daughters are more likely to support liberal issues, particularly those concerning reproductive rights. But this research is the first to study the impact having a daughter can have on the way a CEO runs a company – a really big, publicly-listed company.
“Shaped By Their Daughters: Executives, Female Socialization and Corporate Social Responsibility,” is the work of finance professor Henrik Cronqvist of the University of Miami and Frank Yu of the China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS), and studied 379 CEOs of the S+P 500 index who had among them a total of 943 children, 48.7% of whom were girls (comparable to the statistical standard in the general population). The study focused on the years 1992-2012; 3.7% of the CEOs were female.
Stakeholders vs. Shareholders
Cronkvist and Yu found that the greatest impact on corporate direction was in the area of corporate social responsibility and that male CEOs with daughters were one-third more likely to make CSR decisions like their female counterparts and – when such decisions were implemented – totaled nearly $60 million, or 13.4% of firms’ median incomes. The differences were most notable in the ways in which companies treated minorities, women and the disabled, as well as the way in which companies viewed society-at-large – for example, how stakeholders were treated – whether or not the stakeholders were also shareholders in the company.
The study also showed that companies with good CSR track records tended to hire CEOs with daughters (unconsciously, one presumes), and that firms that change their CEO with daughters to one without experience a fall-off in CSR activities across the board.
Having a son definitely does not produce similar results: the researchers found that CEOs with only sons and no daughters tended to be more socially and politically right-wing, while those with daughters tended to be more left-wing. Put another way, having daughters seemed to make male CEOs more nurturing and more protective – more than their female counterparts. The implication is that children can have as much effect on parents’ behavior and attitudes as parents have on their children.
As Fred Paglia, former (pre-Heinz) president of foodservice and U.S. growth channels at Kraft Foods told the researchers: “My girls are 14 and 12, and to be genuine with you, I wake up every day and look into their eyes before I leave for work and try to make the path a little easier for them. What father wouldn’t want to do that?”
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