the impact of strategic corporate social responsibility on tax avoidance via job meaningfulness and the mediating role of ethical leadership

Purpose of the paper: this research aims to examine the impact of strategic corporate social responsibility on work meaningfulness and tax avoidance through ethical leadership. standard questionnaires based on turker (2009), de hoogh and den hartog (2008), and arnoux-nicolas et al. (2017) with 84 items were employed to measure the variables. a team of experts confirmed the content validity of the questionnaires, and the reliability of the four questionnaires was supported by cronbach's alpha, which was equal to 0.902. the statistical population consisted of 90 finance directors at the headquarters of listed companies on the tehran stock exchange in 2021. 73 completed questionnaires were returned, and data analyses were done using structural equation modelling. the results showed that corporate social responsibility significantly affected tax avoidance. in addition, the meaningfulness of work had a significant effect on the inverse relationship of social responsibility and tax avoidance. moreover, ethical leadership improved this relationship. according to the previous studies and the applied study results, the researcher would like to submit a proposal to the directors and heads of the boards of directors of the tehran stock exchange companies under study. this paper provides new evidence on csr and tax avoidance in iranian companies and sheds light on the importance of considering job meaningfulness and mediating the role of ethical leadership. indeed, this study adds to the csr literature and integrates it with tax avoidance by signifying the role of job meaningfulness and ethical leadership in the csr process. by presenting a refined analysis of csr in a developing country, this research expands the understanding of csr's expression and the effects on iranian companies.