Commitment of independent and institutional women directors to corporate social responsibility reporting

Abstract

This paper examines how independent and institutional women directors on boards affect corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) reporting. Most of the previous empirical evidence has shown a linear association between female directors and CSR disclosure, but to the best of our knowledge, no research has investigated the individual effect of independent and institutional female directors on CSR reporting. Therefore, the analysis of how the disclosure of CSR information is affected by independent and institutional women directors in a separate way merits our attention. Thus, we posit that there is a nonlinear association, concretely quadratic, between independent and institutional female directors on boards and CSR reporting. Our results demonstrate that, in line with the monitoring hypothesis, as the presence of independent and institutional women directors on boards increases, the CSR disclosure improves, but when their presence on boards reaches a tipping point (20.47% and 13.32%, respectively), CSR reporting decreases, which is consistent with the collusion hypothesis. This research contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between board gender diversity and CSR disclosure by suggesting that board structures formed by institutional and independent female directors have an effect on CSR reporting. Hence, female directors play a relevant role on boards since they may influence the CSR disclosure.

CSR Disclosure: The IPO Case

“…This first result is in line with [8], while the second result for large shareholder representatives lends support to the studies who proposed that ownership structure is characterized by the presence of large shareholders and is related to CSR activities. On the other hand, contrary to the literature [4,12,40,87], among others, our results do not reveal any influence on CSR disclosure for Spanish IPO firms in terms of women directors, duality of CEO and chairman positions, or board size. In order to explain the result for women directors and because it is a hand-collected sample, we know that women on Spanish boards of directors in our database are generally selected because they are representatives of large shareholders, but not for being experts.…”

Ownership structure, stakeholder engagement, and corporate social responsibility policies: The moderating effect of board independence

“…Independent directors have closer relations with a various group of stakeholders, know their expectations better, and are more likely to satisfy their interests (Ibrahim & Angelidis, ). Moreover, independent directors do not have any relation with the firm and, thus, they will incline to engage in more CSR‐related activities (Pucheta‐Martínez, Bel‐Oms, & Olcina‐Sempere, ). More importantly, the degree of the reputation of nonexecutive directors may be connected with the ethical behavior of their firms (Fernández‐Gago et al, ).…”

Cultural environments and the appointment of female directors on boards: An analysis from a global perspective

“…Our dependent variable is the percentage of female directors on boards. This variable is denoted by FEMALE_DIR and was calculated as the ratio between the total number of female directors on boards and the total number of directors on boards (i.e.,Pucheta-Martínez, Bel-Oms, & Olcina-Sempere, 2019;Setó-Pamies, 2015;Thams, Bendell, & Terjesen, 2018).…”