Narcissism refers to persistent feelings of grandiosity, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy (American Psychiatric Association 2013). The literature has found narcissism to be associated with individuals making decisions for a firm that fulfill their egos rather than maximize firm value. The literature in psychology, however, suggests that when firms face financial distress, narcissism could be a desirable trait in an individual, enabling the CEO to take the necessary risks and make the necessary decisions for the firm to recover. I study the context under which a firm may benefit from a narcissistic CEO. In this study, I use two measures from prior literature (CEO photo prominence in the annual report and a CEO’s use of first-person personal pronouns) to form a combination measure to investigate whether firms in financial distress are more likely to appoint a CEO with more narcissistic traits. I find some evidence to support this hypothesis. I also examine whether the association between narcissism and future firm performance is affected by the economic conditions of a firm and the visibility of the firm. I find results consistent with firm financial distress increasing a narcissistic CEO’s effect on firm performance in low-visibility firms.

Cette thèse se compose de trois essais empiriques qui étudient le rôle de l’attention des investisseurs comme étant un déterminant de la relation entre la performance sociale de l’entreprise (PSE) et sa performance financière (PFE). Notre objectif étant de repenser la littérature controversée sur les répercussions financières des activités de l’entreprise en matière de RSE, nous émettons un nouveau postulat – l’attention des investisseurs joue un rôle important dans la relation PSE-PFE. En effet, en complément à l’attrait de l’attention des investisseurs sur les marchés financiers tel que suggéré par un bon nombre d’articles académiques, une littérature émergente mais conséquente a récemment souligné le rôle de la visibilité de l’entreprise ainsi que celui de l’attention des différentes parties prenantes comme étant des facteurs pertinents de la relation entre la PSE et la PFE. Par conséquent, nous avons jugé utile de revisiter les retours sur investissements de la PSE, tout en intégrant l’effet de l’attention des investisseurs.Un important courant de la littérature empirique sur la PSE témoigne d’une forte cohésion entre l’entreprise socialement responsable et ses différentes parties prenantes telles que les consommateurs, les employés, les fournisseurs, les investisseurs les analystes financiers ainsi que les militants et activistes, cette cohésion étant encore plus forte, pour les entreprises bénéficiant d’une attention plus accrue de la part des différentes parties prenantes. Dans ce travail de recherche, nous poursuivons dans une telle logique et plus particulièrement, nous mettons en œuvre une analyse plus fine de ce constat, à savoir, nous évaluons le rôle de l’attention des investisseurs, en tant que ressource cognitive rare et limitée, dans la relation PSE-PFE. Cette thèse comporte quatre chapitres. Un chapitre préliminaire passe en revue la littérature existante sur la valeur marché de la PSE. En particulier, nous identifions trois courants de recherche principaux portant sur cette question et discutons du rôle des mécanismes internes et externes qui affectent la réaction des marchés financiers à la performance sociale. Plus important encore, nous accordons une attention particulière à la littérature sur le rôle de la visibilité de l’entreprise pour traduire la PSE en PFE. Ce dernier constat ouvre le débat sur la pertinence probable de l’attention de l’investisseur comme un déterminant clé de la relation PSE-PFE. Ainsi, dans une deuxième partie, nous portons un intérêt particulier à la littérature antérieure sur l’attention, le traitement de l’information et la prise de décision sur les marchés financiers. Puis, après avoir correctement défini l’attention et présenté son rôle sur les marchés financiers, nous essayons dans la dernière section de ce chapitre, d’établir le lien entre la littérature sur l’attention des investisseurs et celle sur l’impact financier de la PSE afin de déceler les perspectives de recherche futures. En dernier lieu, nous concluons et donnons le ton à la question de recherche complexe et stimulante que nous essayons d’élucider tout au long des trois essais de cette thèse à savoir, comment l’attention des investisseurs transforme la PSE en PFE. [...] / This thesis consists of three empirical essays investigating the role of investor attention as a determinant of the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance. Our aim is to rethink the controversial literature on the financial implications of CSR activities by exploring a new premise – investor attention may shape the financial returns on corporate social impact. Since a growing stream of literature has highlighted the role of firm visibility as well as stakeholder attention to connect CSP to financial performance in addition to the complementary literature of investor attention and stock prices, we expect that controlling for firm-specific investor attention would provide novel insights to the literature on the potential financial effects of CSP.A consistent strand of literature has provided interesting evidence of a strong relationship between the firm CSP and its stakeholders such as consumers, employees, suppliers, investors, analysts, activists and communities, and regulators, with the benefits being stronger, the greater the attention to and salience of social activities among stakeholders. We complement and extend this literature by implementing a more granular analysis and particularly we focus on the relevance of investors’ attention, a scarce and limited cognitive resource.This research is divided in four chapters. The first chapter is a survey of prior theoretical and empirical literature on the controversial debate of the relation between CSR and financial outcomes. We have particularly reviewed potential mechanisms that allow CSP to translate into CFP. Most importantly, we rely on studies claiming that firm visibility is a crucial factor to connect social impact to financial performance. Another argument of great appeal is the stakeholder attention theory as proposed by Madsen and Rodgers (2015) from which our research question draws its full legitimacy. Then, we have connected the literatures on attention, information, decision making and CSR to remake the CSP-CFP puzzle and highlight potential research hypotheses. A more readable view is provided by Figure 1 (later in this document) which integrates and synthesizes key predictors, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of the CSP-CFP relation by focusing on studies related to CSR and firm visibility thereby introducing the role of investor attention. Figure 1 is not an exhaustive conceptualization of all the intervening variables in this relationship but rather meant as a multilevel lens and guiding framework to which other variables can be added in the future. However, despite all the advancements in assessing the returns on CSR investments, this debate remains unsettled and has yielded conflicting results. Thus, we conducted three empirical essays on the relation between CSP and financial performance and particularly provide new and unique evidence on the role of investor attention to shape this controversial empirical issue. Therefore, in the first essay, we conduct a multi-country event study and investigate the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) news headlines on the shareholder wealth. We find that investors do not value positive ESG news headlines but negatively react to negative ESG news headlines. This result is consistent with the idea that social responsibility and irresponsibility are not the two sides of the same coin. Furthermore, evidence reveals that shareholders only react to negative corporate governance related headlines. This suggests that investors may be especially prone to attend to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that directly impact their own interests as previously suggested by T. M. Jones et al. (2007). Most importantly, investor attention was found to shape the punishment and reward of CSP, after controlling for the additional role of firm’s internal moderators such as firm size and advertising expenditure. [...]