Drawing on the complexity theory and responding to the recent calls to use such creative methods that mix between a quantitative and qualitative approach. Therefore, this study fills the literature gap, adding novelties, showing evidence from the unexplored (or underexplored) European context and, consequently, shedding light to inconclusive results in previous research concerning the effect of audit committee (AC) and board characteristics on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure by applying a novel research methodology: the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The data were collected from Eikon database for a sample of the top 69 nonfinancial European companies (based on market capitalisation) for the period 2016-2018. The study results support the equifinality and complexity tenets of complexity theory. It also suggests that CSR disclosure relies on a complex configuration of some AC attributes, for example, independence, financial expert member, chair independence, size and activity, and other board characteristics (independence, gender, size, activity, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality). These characteristics play a leading part as a recipe ingredient and, in an appropriate combination, promote achieving high CSR disclosure levels. Our empirical results offer multidimensional and valuable insights for professionals, regulators, and policymakers in establishing and revising the guidelines regarding the AC and board of directors' composition.

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This paper explores the necessary and sufficient conditions of good Corporate Governance practices for high risk disclosure by firms in their Corporate Governance Annual Report. Additionally, we explore whether those recipes have changed during the financial crisis. With a sample of 271 Spanish listed companies, we applied fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to a database of financial and non-financial data. We report that Board of Directors independence, size, level of activity and gender diversity, CEO duality, Audit Committee independence, being audited by the Big Four auditing firms and the presence of institutional investors are associated with high risk disclosure. The conditions included in almost every combination are the presence of institutional investors and being audited by the Big Four. We found similar combinations for 2006 and 2012, while the analysis for 2009 showed the lowest number of causal configurations.KEYWORDS | Board composition, corporate governance, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, independent director, risk disclosure. RESUMO O presente artigo investiga as condições necessárias e suficientes das boas práticas de Governança RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas | FGV/EAESP

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