We examine the impact of country-level governance and legal system, on corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) engagement. Our analysis evaluates the extent to which they have endured the global financial crisis, as reflected in the CSRD of listed firms. We explore whether CSRD practices are similar or different in organizations from six countries and two different continents corresponding to two different legal systems, corporate governance systems, and accounting models. These factors, among others, may influence the disclosure policy of CSR information. We provide evidence that CSRD increasing effect of country-level governance is more pronounced for companies in the Anglo-American legal and regulatory environment and less pronounced for those in Euro-Continental institutional environment.

In this paper, the authors examine the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in European and Anglo-Saxon contexts. The study is based on 324 Anglo-Saxon listed corporations and 310 European listed corporations for 11 years from 2006 to 2016 (6813 year-observations). The regression analysis shows that board gender and board age affect CSR disclosure. This study also finds that CEO duality negatively affects CSR disclosure in both contexts. Finally, the study found that the existence of a CSR committee and CSR experts positively affect CSR disclosure in both contexts.