The contribution of financial entities to the sustainable development through the reporting of corporate social responsibility information

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the relationship between the board composition and corporate social responsibility (CSR) of a sample of listed financial entities, discussing the reasons driving these entities to disclose CSR information. We hypothesise that there is a positive association between outside (institutional and independent directors) and female directors and CSR disclosure, and a negative relationship between inside directors and CSR reporting. Our findings provide evidence that the presence of independent directors and female directors on boards promotes CSR disclosure. Moreover, the results also show that the presence of inside directors and institutional directors on boards does not have an influence on CSR reporting.Thus, our evidence suggests that board attributes, such as the presence of independent and female directors, encourage financial entities to report CSR matters, showing the effectiveness of these two corporate governance mechanisms. The paper sheds light on the influence of the board structure of financial entities on CSR disclosure.Therefore, this study contributes to past research by providing an index for measuring the CSR disclosure of financial entities and the importance of the distinction between outside and inside directors.

The determinants of business contribution to the 2030 Agenda: Introducing the SDG Reporting Score

“…Specifically, our results reveal that firms with a BoD interested in supporting and defending the interests of external stakeholders are more likely to disclose SDG information. According to prior studies, the presence of independent directors increases firms' non‐financial disclosure through their ability to combine social value and legitimacy strategies (Pucheta‐Martínez, Bel‐Oms, & Nekhili, 2019). In fact, unlike other directors, their actions are characterized by an orientation toward external stakeholders who are typically more interested in non‐financial performance than shareholders (Fernández‐Gago, Cabeza‐García, & Nieto, 2018).…”

The revision of nonfinancial reporting directive: A critical lens on the comparability principle

“…The report characteristics to be considered are the degree of the adherence to the GRI Comprehensive option (Boiral, 2013; Sethi et al, 2017) and the overall number of pages that compose each report (Di Tullio et al, 2019; Melloni et al, 2017). The variables that describe corporate governance characteristics are BoD size, the percentage of independent directors involved within the BoD, CEO duality, the existence of a CSR committee, and the involvement of a Big 4 accounting firm within the assurance processes (García‐Sánchez, Gómez‐Miranda, David, & Rodríguez‐Ariza, 2019; Husted & de Sousa‐Filho, 2019; Muttakin, Khan, & Mihret, 2018; Naciti, 2019; Pucheta‐Martínez, Bel‐Oms, & Nekhili, 2019; Velte, 2017b). Finally, to estimate the impacts related to firms' size, we have used the natural logarithm of the revenues as a proxy (Michelon et al, 2019; Simnett, Nugent, & Huggins, 2009).…”

Nudging toward diversity in the boardroom: A systematic literature review of board diversity of financial institutions

“…Also, prior studies examined the board diversity influence on CSR in terms of gender diversity only. There is no work that considered the other diversity indicators such as age, ethnicity, nationality, education, cultural background, and experience (Pucheta‐Martínez, Bel‐Oms, & Nekhili, 2019).…”