Moderating Role Of Ownership In Relationship Between CSRD And Firm Performance

Abstract

In the last few years, the importance of corporate social responsibility gained tremendous attention from researchers and policymakers. The stakeholder and legitimacy theories help to understand the importance of corporate social responsibility towards firms’ performance. Although, abundant literature is available on the link between CSRD and firm performance but for China, this research area is still in a drought. Considering this, the purpose of this study is to find the relationship between CSRD and firm performance and ownership structure role in this relationship for China. Various parameters such as; disclosure score, ownership structure and performance indicators like ROA, TQ and EPS are addressed in this study. The Data used for this study is collected from Shanghai stock exchange, Shenzhen stock exchange and CSMAR database for selected companies from 2006 to 2014 including 3462 observations. Accounting and market measures are taken as performance indicators. Disclosure score and ownership structure are used as dependent variables with various control variables. Regression analysis revealed that, after controlling the size of firms, the relationship between CSRD and firm financial performance is positively associated, but this relationship turned adverse in the case of EPS due to shareholders uncertainties about CSR. The relationship between performance and ownership structure is also significant but adversely associated. The results also indicated that ownership structure plays a moderating role for the relationship between firm performance and CSRD. Furthermore, the graphical analysis also supports our empirical findings that the ownership control affects the performance of enterprises and CSRD. The state-owned firms have less tendency of disclosing the CSR information as compared to nonstate-owned and the effect of CSRD on performance varies accordingly. This study explores the importance of ownership structure and CSRD towards ultimate goals of a company. Furthermore, this study finds that government-owned firms are not performing well for society in China. Therefore, government needs to consider private-public sector partnership to improve the quality of CSRD and performance. This study determined that the ownership structure moderate the relationship between CSRD and Firm performance. Thus, our work is an important addition to existing literature and useful for government to improve concerned policies.