Board Characteristics and Corporate Sustainability Reporting: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of board characteristics (such as board size, board independence, CEO Duality, board meetings, and committee) on corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) in China. Unlike previous studies, we examine this relationship in light of the three pillars of corporate sustainability reporting: economic, environmental, and social. Using both the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamics Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) empirical models, our data, which comprises 9842 firm-year observations from both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges covering the 2006–2019 fiscal periods, reveals that board independence, a larger board size, and a board sustainability committee promote CSR in the three CSR pillars. However, the study shows that CEO duality is more likely to impede CSR. While the current study seems to provide some understanding regarding the relationship between board characteristics and corporate sustainability reporting to corporate boards, regulators, and practitioners interested in advancing the course of CSR, some significant knowledge gaps still need to be explored in future studies. Future research may consider other board characteristics as well as explore other CSR indices like integrated reporting and triple-bottom-line approaches.

Diversity of Institutional Investors’ Bidding Opinions in Shaping the Sustainability of IPO Performance

“…Meanwhile, current research on corporate sustainability primarily concentrates on listed companies in the secondary market [10][11][12]. Nonetheless, we argue that the IPO market provides a useful context for examining corporate sustainability.…”

“…In order to test the mechanism of institutional investors' bid opinion diversity (Diversity) on accounting performance (ROE_Delta/ROA_Delta/Profit_Growth/Tobit_Q), this paper constructs Equations ( 11) and (12). Among them, Equation (11) tests the effect of opinion diversity (Diversity) on the IPO over-quotation ratio (Diversity) on the first day of stock listing, and Equation ( 12) tests the effect of IPO over-quotation ratio on a series of accounting performance indicators.…”

How to Improve the Environmental, Social and Governance Performance of Chinese Construction Enterprises Based on the Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis Method

“…ESG performance is a result of corporate strategy, which depends largely on corporate board size [30]. First, a larger board provides more knowledge on sustainability, as well as controlling the quality of decisions on ESG strategies [31,32]. The supervision and management of the enterprise also becomes much more efficient.…”

Pengaruh Good Corporate Governance dan Financial Distress Terhadap Pengungkapan Laporan Keberlanjutan

“…Direksi dapat memengaruhi kegiatan perusahaan, salah satunya adalah pengungkapan sustainability (Ardiani et al, 2022). Berdasarkan penelitian yang telah dilakukan sebelumnya, ukuran direksi berpengaruh positif dan juga signifikan pada pengungkapan laporan keberlanjutan (Anyigbah et al, 2023). Tetapi hasil penelitian ini berlawanan dengan penelitian lainnya, yaitu ukuran direksi memiliki pengaruh signifikan negatif terhadap pengungkapan laporan keberlanjutan (Ardiani et al, 2022).…”

“…Semakin besar dewan, maka pengaruhnya terhadap isu-isu keberlanjutan juga semakin besar (Janggu et al, 2014). Penelitian ini didukung oleh penelitian lainnya Herawaty et al (2021), Euginia & Triwacananingrum (2022), dan Anyigbah et al (2023) bahwa ukuran direksi berpengaruh positif dan juga signifikan pada pengungkapan laporan keberlanjutan.…”