Commitment of independent and institutional women directors to corporate social responsibility reporting

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12218
• Author: Inmaculada Bel‐Oms,María Consuelo Pucheta‐Martínez,Gustau Olcina‐Sempere
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019

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  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2019;28:290–304.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

According to Gray, Owen , and Adams (1996), corporate soc ial re-

sponsibilit y (CSR) repor ting is “the pr ocess of communic ating the

social and enviro nmental effects of o rganisations’ economic actions

to particular interest groups within society and to society at large.”

In other words, through CSR reporting, companies voluntarily dis-

close to the stakeholders and society the environmental and social

impacts c aused by their dail y activities (e.g., Hammann , Habisch, &

Pechlaner, 2009; Ja mali & Neville, 2011; Jamali, Dinari, & H arwood,

2015; Vashchenko, 2017), going b eyond the financ ial figures of in-

terest to investo rs to describe t he firms’ relati ons with their st ake-

holders. Th e disclosure of CS R information is not e nforced by a

specific law, but int ernational bo dies such as the Gl obal Report ing

Initiative (GRI) m ake recommendations on CS R matters.

Relevant decisio ns regarding CSR issues a re approved by boards

and, therefor e, board composition is cons idered one of the most im-

portant too ls for promoting C SR report ing (Muttak in, Khan, & Mihre t,

2018). Samara, Jama li, Sierra, an d Parada (2018) also s upport the

significant ro le played by the boar d of directors in p romoting CSR

initiatives, sp ecifically the environm ental and social perfor mance of

family firms . The authors s how that two governa nce struct ures of

family busine sses improve envir onmental and s ocial perfor mance:

the combinatio n of different levels of fami ly involvement in the busi-

ness with (a) outsi ders on the boa rd and (b) a high famil y presence

on the board. Am ong the board attributes th at may affect the C SR

Received: 4 Sept ember 2017 

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  Revised: 1 Novembe r 2018 

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  Accepted: 2 Novemb er 2018

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12218

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commitment of independent and institutional women directors

to corporate social responsibility reporting

María Consuelo Pucheta‐Martínez1 | Inmaculada Bel‐Oms2 | Gustau Olcina‐Sempere3

1Departme nt of Finance and

Accounting, U niversidad Jaume I , Castellón,

Spain

2Departamento de Finanzas

Empresariales, Universidad of Valencia,

Campus de Tarongers, València, Spain

3Departamento de Educación y Didácticas

Específic as, Universidad J aume I, Castelló n,

Spain

Correspondence

María Consuelo Pucheta‐Martínez,

Departm ent of Finance and Accou nting,

Universida d Jaume I, Camp us del Riu Sec, s/n,

Castellón 12071, Spain

Email: pucheta@uji.es

Funding information

The Spanish Mi nistry of Economy, Ind ustry

and Competitiveness, Grant/Award Number:

ECO 2017-82259-R

Abstract

This paper examine s how independent and institutional wo men directors on b oards

affect corpor ate social responsibility (here after CSR) reportin g. Most of the previous

empirical eviden ce has shown a linear association bet ween female directors and C SR

disclosure, but to the b est of our knowledge, n o research has investig ated the indi-

vidual effect of independent and institutional female directors on CSR reporting.

Therefore, the anal ysis of how the disclosure of CSR informatio n is affected by inde-

pendent and insti tutional women direc tors in a separate way m erits our attent ion.

Thus, we posit that the re is a nonlinear associa tion, concretely qua dratic, betwe en

independent and i nstitutional fema le directors on bo ards and CSR repo rting. Our

results demons trate that, in line wi th the monitoring hyp othesis, as the pres ence of

independent and institutional women directors on boards increases, the CSR disclo-

sure improves, but whe n their presence on bo ards reaches a tippi ng point (20.47%

and 13.32%, respec tively), CSR reporting d ecreases, which is consistent with t he col-

lusion hypothesis. T his research contributes to the exis ting literature on the relation-

ship between boa rd gender diversit y and CSR disclosur e by suggesting that bo ard

structures f ormed by instituti onal and independ ent female director s have an effect

on CSR report ing. Hence, female directors play a releva nt role on boards since th ey

may influence the CSR disclosure.

JEL CLASSIFI CATION

M14, G30, G34