Exploring in emerging countries corporate social reponsibility reporting and corporate governance mechanisms

Abstract

Within corporate governance, the board of directors plays a major role in improving corporate transparency by increasing the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information. In this paper, we analyse the effect of board composition, particularly board independence, board gender diversity, CEO duality, and the presence of a CSR board committee on CSR reporting. Evidence of this effect is still scarce when it concerns the effect of corporate governance mechanisms and CSR disclosure in firms pertaining to emerging market economies, and for this reason, our study focuses on this type of country. Our sample comprises 934 international firm‐year observations from the following 10 countries with emerging markets: Brazil, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and Thailand for the period 2004–2015. This classification of countries with emerging markets is based on the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Markets Index. Drawing on agency and stakeholder approaches, we posit four hypotheses: board independence and CSR board committees positively affect CSR disclosure, whereas board gender diversity and CEO duality have a negative effect. The results obtained reveal that in emerging market economies, the presence of women on boards of directors is quite limited and, therefore, their participation in decision‐making is minimal. Furthermore, CEO duality discourages the disclosure of CSR information, which may be justified for the family orientation of most firms in these countries, where the CEO is usually also the chairperson of the board.