The Impacts of Chief Sustainability Officers' Structural Power on Corporate Social Responsibility Performance

ABSTRACT Extant literature assumes that powerful executives can wield their influence with minimal opposition from lower‐power actors. We reconsider this assumption by incorporating the coalitional view in which lower‐power actors can mobilize coalitions to resist. We investigate this dynamic through the case of chief sustainability officers (CSOs), a role characterized by persistent internal tensions, thereby creating conditions necessary for coalition‐building. We hypothesize that CSOs' structural power positively influences CSR performance, as it enables them to secure essential resources. However, top management team (TMT) size and TMT tenure weaken this relationship, as they affect the pool of potential coalition partners and the accessibility to these partners. Using a generalized estimating equation model on a sample of 292 non‐financial and non‐utility firms with CSOs from 2009 to 2020, we find empirical support for these predictions. We contribute to research on power in TMT, the coalitional view of the firm, and CSR performance.