CEO ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility and financial performance in the industrial revolution 4.0: Evidence from garment and textile industry

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to assess the relationship between the CEO ethical leadership style and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation through corporate culture; thereby testing the impact of CSR implementation on financial performance; finally examining the regulatory role of CEO founder status and the corporation size in the relationship between the CEO ethical leadership style and corporate culture. A research on 536 Vietnamese garment and textile enterprises is conducted and the results show that CEO ethical leadership style positively impacts CSR implementation through corporate culture. Simultaneously, the CSR implementation brings more positive financial results henceforth. A statistically significant regulatory role of the CEO founder status and the corporation size in the relationship is also determined. The bigger the CEO founder performs, the better the influence of CEO ethical leadership style on corporate culture, and the smaller the CEO founder performs, the less impact of CEO ethical leadership style on corporate culture. In contrast to larger businesses, the CEO ethical leadership style slightly influences the corporate culture because at this time corporate culture has been formed for a long time and has become a habit of employees.