CEO Overconfidence and Corporate Social Responsibility: A Micro‐ CSR Perspective

Although research on micro‐level CSR has increasingly emphasized individual‐level antecedents, the role of CEO overconfidence has not been systematically integrated into the literature. To address this gap, a systematic literature review was undertaken of 62 studies on CEO overconfidence and CSR, revealing a mixed picture of positive, negative, contingent, and nonlinear effects driven by heterogeneous operationalizations of overconfidence and CSR as well as diverse contextual factors. Since most studies rely on firm‐level proxies for CEO overconfidence and aggregate CSR indicators, however, the psychological mechanisms connecting CEO overconfidence to CSR outcomes remain largely unexplored. To help advance the field, this article proposes a future research agenda that recasts CEO overconfidence as an individual‐level antecedent of micro‐CSR. This agenda (a) emphasizes the different facets of overconfidence, (b) specifies heterogeneous CSR outcomes, (c) examines how contextual factors are perceived and enacted by CEOs, and (d) focuses explicitly on CSR‐related perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.