臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.28 NO.3

147 NTU Management Review Vol. 28 No. 3 Dec. 2018 Although the present study CEO career horizon is considered related to corporate misconduct, some governance arrangements may take their toll on the influence of CEO career horizon, especially board composition (Chen, 2013; McDonald and Westphal, 2010; Lin, Kuo, and Su, 2008; Williams et al., 2005). As we know, “many hands make light work”; a board composed of more members might be more capable of preventing misconduct from occurring. This suggests that board size would interplay with the effect of CEO career horizon in regard to the incidence of corporate malfeasance. In addition to board size, the composition of a board may also confound the relationship between CEO career horizon and corporate misconduct. Considering the complexity and diversity of business misconduct, board members usually have difficulty in controlling and curbing all kinds of misconduct and crimes. Board members who have diversified skills and experiences may also be more helpful in detecting the corporate malfeasance and thus reducing the incidence of business misconduct; that is, the diversity of board composition, such as functional and industrial background of members, can have a moderating effect on the CEO career horizon-corporate misconduct relationship. In short, the second purpose of this study is not only to examine whether the relationship between CEO career horizon and corporate misconduct is moderated by a firm’s board composition, but also a response to previous research which calls for further and deeper exploration into the moderating effects of board characteristics on corporate social responsibility (Ibrahim, Howard, and Angelidis, 2003; Rao and Tilt, 2016). A sample of the publicly listed semiconductor firms in Taiwan is chosen for this study because these firms not only play an important role in Taiwan’s economy, but occupy a dominant position in the world’s semiconductor industry. Any misconduct undertaken by Taiwanese semiconductor firms may result in serious consequences of an economic, environmental and/or social nature. For example, the water pollution caused by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), the biggest semiconductor assembly and test firm in the world, heavily damaged the reputation of Taiwanese firms across the industry. Other types of corporate misconduct have also been seen in this industrial sector, such as Procomp Informatics’ financial fraud, which seriously disrupted both the capital market order and investor confidence. Considering that every company has their own specific practices, simply looking at one type of corporate misconduct may not be sufficient to ferret out the full extent of corporate misconduct. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effect of CEO career horizon on corporate misconduct by considering various types of corporate wrongdoing. The proposed research questions were examined