This paper examines the heterogeneous links between board gender diversity and corporate social performance in different industries across China. OLS regression models are approximated using the data of Chinese industries from 2009 to 2015. Robustness test and two-stage least square (2SLS) methods are incorporated to cater for robustness and endogeneity. Board gender diversity (BGD) stimulates corporate social performance (CSP) of firms with environmental and social risk exposure regardless of critical mass and directors’ independence. It does so for firms with governance risk exposure while incorporating the critical mass effect and the director’s independence. Overall, the positive effect of BGD is prevalent in different industries at an aggregate level while considering firms with an overall ESG risk exposure. The findings imply that BGD can mitigate the ESG risk exposure in terms of enhancing the CSP and the advantage can be transpired with the inclusion of even one female director (independent or executive) to the board. The study also highlights that BGD enhances CSP in industries with more environmental and social risk exposure while doing so in industries with governance risk exposure after complementation by critical mass and independent director effects.

The context of China fosters different contextual factors, which influences the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in comparison to firms across the rest of the world. Political ties at a corporate level are one of these vital factors. This paper studies the influence of firm-level political ties (PT) and executive turnover (ET) on the quality of CSR disclosure in the context of shareholding status of departing executive in Chinese listed A-share firms. Stakeholder and Agency theories are applied to the dissemination of CSR disclosures in Chinese firms whereby we used 20,578 firm-years interpretations of Chinese registered companies between 2012 and 2019. The results foster a negative link between executive turnover and quality of CSR disclosures. In addition, a negative relationship has been found between political ties and the quality of CSR disclosure. The findings disclose that the shareholding status of departing executive moderate the relationship between the impact of political ties and executive turnover on firms quality of CSR disclosure, whilst the effect of executive turnover on the quality of CSR disclosure was found more pronounced for firms whose departing executive held larger shareholding (SH). This study contributed to the literature on the quality of CSR disclosure while recognizing the negative effect of executive turnover on a firm’s quality of CSR disclosure for politically tied firms with a reinforcing moderating role of the shareholding status of departing executive.

: This paper studies the effects of a firm’s financial performance (FP) and chief executive officer’s (CEO) duality on the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the context of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) among Chinese A-share-registered companies. The results depict a negative relationship between CEO duality and CSR disclosure. Our results demonstrate that better-performing firms disclose CSR information more frequently and of higher quality compared with firms with poor financial performance. This role of financial performance in the quality of CSR disclosure is generally valuable in public enterprises; however, it is relatively sluggish in state-owned enterprises The outcomes indicate that the dual leadership structure reduces assessments and renders CEOs less liable to their stakeholders. Therefore, this study offers valuable information and details for regulators to improve corporate governance and CSR from the perspective of stakeholder theory.