Purpose

Research on the organizational ramifications of chief executive officer (CEO) greed remains scarce. This study intends to fill this gap by examining the impact of CEO greed on an important yet risky corporate strategy, corporate tax avoidance (CTA). Drawing on upper echelons theory, the authors argue that greedier CEOs tend to engage in more CTA. The relationship is weaker when CEOs experienced economic recessions in their early career and stronger when CEOs are endowed with equity ownership of their respective firms.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors test the hypotheses with data from US public firms from 1997 to 2008 and employ the ordinary least square regression analysis to analyze the hypothesized relationships. The authors also test the robustness of the results by performing the two-stage least square regression and propensity score matching analyses.

Findings

The findings lend broad support to all the hypotheses. The authors find that greedier CEOs tend to engage in more CTA by paying lower corporate taxes. The impact of greed on CTA is attenuated when CEOs are recession CEOs and is exacerbated when CEOs own large numbers of firm shares.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the upper echelons research by investigating a novel executive personal characteristic, greed, and its negative impact on an important organizational outcome. This paper also contributes to the growing tax research that recognizes the important role executives play in shaping corporate tax strategies.

中文翻译：

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CEO的贪婪与企业避税

目的

关于首席执行官 (CEO) 贪婪的组织影响的研究仍然很少。本研究旨在通过研究首席执行官的贪婪对重要但有风险的企业战略——企业避税（CTA）的影响来填补这一空白。作者借鉴高层理论，认为贪婪的首席执行官往往会进行更多的 CTA。当首席执行官在职业生涯早期经历经济衰退时，这种关系会减弱；而当首席执行官被赋予各自公司的股权时，这种关系会增强。

设计/方法论/途径

作者利用 1997 年至 2008 年美国上市公司的数据检验了这些假设，并采用普通最小二乘回归分析来分析假设的关系。作者还通过进行两阶段最小二乘回归和倾向得分匹配分析来测试结果的稳健性。

发现

研究结果为所有假设提供了广泛支持。作者发现，贪婪的首席执行官倾向于通过缴纳较低的公司税来参与更多的 CTA。当首席执行官是经济衰退时期的首席执行官时，贪婪对 CTA 的影响会减弱；而当首席执行官拥有大量公司股票时，贪婪对 CTA 的影响会加剧。

原创性/价值

本文通过调查一种新颖的高管个人特征——贪婪及其对重要组织成果的负面影响，为高层研究做出了贡献。本文还为日益增长的税务研究做出了贡献，该研究认识到高管在制定公司税务策略方面发挥的重要作用。