Abstract
Boards of directors affect corporate strategy and decision-making through monitoring of management and resource provision. Recently, an increasing number of studies have examined the relationships between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). These studies have yielded inconsistent findings. This article therefore reports the results of a study applying meta-analytical techniques to a sample of 82 empirical studies to help clarify the relationships between board characteristics and CSR. Although prior research has tended to apply relatively simplistic models investigating the impact of individual board characteristics independently and only directly, we adopt a more complex perspective to shed new light on the board characteristics–CSR nexus. Specifically, we use a meta-analytic path model that accounts for the potential interplay between board characteristics in determining CSR and tests whether the presence of a CSR committee plays a meditating role. Our findings suggest that board size, board independence, and female board representation are partially interrelated with each other and jointly influence CSR directly as well as indirectly via the presence of a CSR committee. In addition, we find that country-level institutional factors act as moderators and that the relationships differ with regard to the specific dimension of CSR (i.e., social, environmental, or aggregate).
Highlights
Boards of directors affect corporate strategy and decision-making through monitoring of management and resource provision
While most studies concerned with board characteristics and firm performance focus on financial performance,1 recently several scholars have investigated the association between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR), a nonfinancial dimension of firm performance
These findings suggest that high levels of legal and regulatory shareholder protection can substitute for positive board-level impacts on CSR, which is in line with the literature that emphasizes the need to consider the role of the institutional context in corporate governance research (Aguilera et al, 2012; Yoshikawa et al, 2014)
Summary
Boards of directors affect corporate strategy and decision-making through monitoring of management and resource provision. An increasing number of studies have examined the relationships between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While most studies concerned with board characteristics and firm performance focus on financial performance, recently several scholars have investigated the association between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR), a nonfinancial dimension of firm performance (de Villiers et al, 2011; Walls et al, 2012). While theoretically self-evident, little is known about whether, and how, certain board characteristics may interact with each other in their relationships with CSR (Galbreath, 2016; Oh et al, 2018; Rao & Tilt, 2016) In this vein, Jain and Jamali (2016) conclude from their review on corporate governance and CSR that future research needs to “[. To date, no quantitative review has investigated the (potentially) different relationships between the social versus the environmental dimension of CSR and board characteristics
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
