Institutional Ownership and Corporate Social Performance: The Moderating Effects of Investment Horizon, Activism, and Coordination

Scandals at Enron and WorldCom have thrust debates concerning corporate governance and corporate social performance (CSP) to the forefront of the minds of shareholders, managers, and public policy makers. Relying on the theory of stakeholder salience, the authors suggest that institutional owners’ investment horizons, as well as the frequency and coordination of institutional owners’ activism, moderate the institutional ownership -CSP relationship. Data collected in 1995 and 2000 from the Fortune 500 firms show that long-term institutional ownership is positively associated with CSP and that the frequency and coordination of activism interact with long-term institutional holdings to positively affect CSP 3 years later.