Corporate political donations, board gender diversity, and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from Australia

Abstract

We examine the association between corporate political donations (CPDs) and the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) listed firms. We also explore the effect of board members’ gender diversity on this association. Consistent with legitimacy and neopluralist argument, we report a negative association between corporate political donations and the quality of CSR disclosures. Furthermore, board gender diversity acts as the moderator and mitigates the negative association between political donations and CSR disclosures. We also find that it requires more than one female director to moderate the association between CPDs and CSR disclosures which provides support to the critical mass theory. Our additional analysis reveals that the negative association between CPDs and the quality of CSR disclosures is stronger for the resource industry, and the proportion of female directors has an insignificant effect on this association.