PhD Seminar Series: Olivia Askheim and Bahar Nejat

Corporate Social Irresponsibility and CSR Pay

Speaker: Olivia Askheim (Bocconi University)

Abstract: Firms have increasingly tied executive compensation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors, yet the effectiveness of this practice remains contested. Existing research highlights that deficiencies in the design of CSR pay schemes could be to blame, but offers less insight into why firms adopt such inefficient arrangements in the first place. We propose that CSR pay offers legitimacy benefits, while firms’ CSR commitment shapes payouts’ sensitivity to CSR performance. Corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) provides a revealing context: controversies heighten scrutiny and pressure to demonstrate responsibility, while signaling shortcomings in existing commitments. “Irresponsible” firms may therefore adopt CSR pay before or without establishing strategies and systems for meaningful objectives and performance assessment. They may also exploit opacity to signal accountability while insulating payouts from CSR performance and maintaining managerial discretion. Focusing on S&P 500 firms from 2013 to 2023 and using the RepRisk dataset we seek to examine whether CSI precedes adoption and re-adoption of CSR pay and opaque design practices, including poorly defined CSR objectives and bundling of CSR with non-CSR criteria.

Reading the Room: How Evaluators Construct Relational Fit in Venture Pitch Meetings

Speaker: Bahar Nejat (Bocconi University)

Abstract: Venture pitches are rarely judged alone. Investors evaluate a founder and a venture in rooms where other evaluators sit within sight, so judgment and behavior unfold together. Yet most of what we know about pitch evaluation comes from where it ends: what evaluators conclude, and whether they invest. We follow the evaluation along two paths. One is judgmental: how evaluators appraise the fit among the founder, the venture and the investing firm. The other is behavioral: where evaluators turn their attention in the room while that judgment is forming. We study both in an immersive virtual-reality investment committee. Participants step into the role of a junior venture capitalist joining a firm's evaluation meeting, seated with two senior partners who remain neutral throughout, and watch two founders pitch their ventures. We randomly varied which founder pitched which venture and tracked participants' gaze (with eye tracking) as the pitches unfolded. Appraisals of fit tracked how risky participants judged each venture and whether they recommended investing. The founder–venture assignment, in turn, shaped how participants directed their attention within the room, including toward the senior partners beside them. Evaluation, we suggest, is not only a matter of what evaluators think of a venture but of how they move through the social setting in which they think it. Investors read the configuration and, quite literally, read the room.