The effect of corporate governance elements on corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting information of Bangladeshi listed commercial banks and explores the potential effects of corporate governance (CG) elements on CSR disclosures. Design/methodology/approach -The annual reports of all private commercial banks (PCB) for the year 2007-2008 are examined to analyse the banks' CSR reporting practice using content analysis. It also considers three elements of CG such as non-executive directors, existence of foreign nationalities and women representation in the board. The multiple regressions were used to measure the impact of CG elements on banks' CSR reporting initiatives. Findings -The results of the study demonstrate that though voluntary, overall CSR reporting by Bangladeshi PCB are rather moderate, however, the varieties of CSR items are really impressive. The results also displayed no significant relationship between the women representation in the board and CSR reporting. Conversely, non-executive directors and existence of foreign nationalities have been found the significant impact on the CSR reporting.Research limitations/implications -The main limitations of the paper are that it considers PCB from only one country and uses annual reports disclosures from a single year. The results of the study can be used by researchers to analyse the benefits of including the non-executive directors and foreign nationals on different types of CSR initiatives and standard setters to set the suitable CSR policy guidelines with a view to reinforce such initiatives. Originality/value -This unique paper divulges the CSR related disclosure with possible impact of CG in the specific context of a transitional economy's banks such as Bangladesh. The paper contributes to the CSR literature as it presents empirical evidence of the influences of CG structure on the practices of CSR activities in developing countries' banking sector setting.

The Relationship Between Board Characteristics and Environmental Disclosure: Evidence from Turkish Listed Companies

“…These results suggest that the presence of independent directors and women directors on the board and the presence of independent directors on the audit committee are unrelated to the level of environmental disclosures of the sampled companies. These findings are in line with the results of the studies conducted by Michelon and Parbonetti (2012), who found an non-significant relationship between the proportion of independent directors and sustainabilty disclosure and Khan (2010), who documented that women representation on the board is not statistically significantly associated with corporate social responsility reporting, Bouaziz (2014) reported a nonsignificant relationship between the audit comittee independence and the voluntary financial disclosures of Canadian listed firms. The non-significant relationship between these board characteristics and environmental disclosure can be explanied by the fact that the majority of the boards of the sampled firms were mainly dominated by dependent and male members for the time period covered in the study.…”

“…Thus from an agency theory perspective, it is widely accepted that as the proportion of independent directors on the board increases, the effectiveness of the board in monitoring and controlling management also increases (Jizi et al 2014;Liao et al 2014;Chau and Gray 2010). It is also argued that as independent directors are less aligned to management, they can be seen as a balance mechanism to ensure that companies act in the best interests of shareholders, other stakeholders and society generally (Sharif and Rashid 2014;Khan 2010). From this point of view, independent directors may encourage companies to disclose more information to outside stakeholders.…”

“…2012;Khan 2010;Arcay and Vazquez 2005). In this sense, it can be easily said that both corporate governance and environmental disclosure tend to reduce information asymmetries between managers and stakeholders, (Ernstberger and Grüning 2013;Iatridis 2013), however relatively less attention has been paid to link these two research areas (Khan et al 2013).…”

The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Turkish Banking Sector

“…As stated above, codifying and grouping the information from banks' annual and sustainability reports was done in line with previous studies (Khan, 2010;Gray, Kouhy, & Lavers, 1995a;1995b;Gray, 2002;Guthrie & Parker, 1989;Guthrie & Abeysekera, 2006) and the local industry features. The annual report of the companies is a foremost source of data to analyze voluntary reporting for social and environmental studies (Gibson & Guthrie, 1994).…”

“…Previous studies like Dahya, Lonie, andPower (1996), Carter, Simkins, andSimpson (2003), Branco and Rodrigues (2008), and Khan (2010) showed the positive relation between CSR reporting and corporate governance. According to Fama and Jensen (1983), increasing number of non-executive members on the board is a useful tool to solve the conflicts between managers and owners.…”