PhD Seminar Series: Olivia Askheim and Diego Jannace

Locational Preferences in CSR: Findings from Family-Owned Multinational Enterprises

Speaker: Olivia Askheim (Bocconi University)

Abstract: As CSR becomes an increasingly widespread element of firm strategy, the key question is no longer whether firms engage in CSR, but what kind of efforts they undertake, where, and why. Upper-echelon research emphasizes that CEO traits can influence CSR outcomes and lead firms to prioritize locations the CEO is personally attached to, such as their hometown or country of origin. The paper extends such perspectives to the realm of ownership, examining how family ownership affects locational CSR choices. We argue that family-owned MNEs prefer conducting CSR in their home country, where identity alignment is stronger and liability of foreignness is minimized. We also investigate how family visibility, country-level cultural and institutional distance, and subsidiary characteristics shape both the likelihood of engaging in CSR abroad and firms’ preferences for which host-country locations to do CSR activities in. Using data from the sustainability reports of 207 privately-owned Italian family MNEs (2013–2021), we identify concrete CSR activities across domestic and foreign settings. Our findings contribute to CSR, international business, and family business research by showing how owners shape the geographic pattern of firms’ CSR engagement.

Causal Reasoning and Performance

Speaker: Diego Jannace (Bocconi University)

Abstract: While causal reasoning underpins econometric theory, its practical impact on decision performance remains largely untested. We develop a dynamic model of decision-making under uncertainty, showing that causal theories raise economic performance. We provide the first large-scale empirical evidence of this phenomenon by conducting eight field randomized controlled trials with 1,556 early-stage startups across eight countries, comparing theory-and-evidence-based training to evidence-only and control conditions. We estimate that theory-trained entrepreneurs achieve 1.7 times higher cumulative sales growth and employee productivity relative to both counterfactual groups. Instrumental-variable estimates confirm that theory-based causality drives these gains, whereas pure experimentation offers no significant short-term benefits. Our findings establish causal reasoning as a critical determinant of economic performance and advocate embedding causal theorizing alongside experimentation in decision-making.