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Governing Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling: The Effect of the Governance Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling

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Abstract

This paper presents an examination of the relationship between the presence and composition of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee on the corporate governance board and CSR decoupling. Using a sample of listed firms drawn from 41 countries, we found that the presence of a CSR committee on the corporate board is negatively associated with CSR decoupling. We also noted that the nature of the industry to which a firm belongs, a firm's level of CSR orientation, and corporate governance quality strengthen such association. Further analysis of the relationship between the structure of the CSR committee and CSR decoupling shows that larger CSR committee size and a greater independence and longer tenure of its members negatively affect CSR decoupling. Our results are robust to various alternative specifications and offer important research and managerial implications. The findings of this study contribute to the growing literature on corporate governance and CSR.

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Data Availability

Authors do not have the right to share data. We confirm that this paper has not been published previously or it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Notes

  1. We selected our keyword to search for CSR committee using the BoardEx data dictionary and the glossary of Thomson Reuters’Asset4 published in 2015. These two sources provide various names for the CSR committee and aspects related to the CSR orientation of the corporate governance board.

  2. The Asset4 ESG performance score is available from 2002, while Bloomberg started providing ESG disclosure score from 2006. We therefore extrapolated the Bloomberg ESG disclosure score for the years 2002–2005 (Amman et al., 2018; Hummel & Schlick, 2016), to ensure the availability of the ESG performance and disclosure score for whole sample period. For Bloomberg’s missing years (i.e., 2002–2005), we ran a linear extrapolation based on following three years’ values for the relevant components of the ESG disclosure score. In those cases in which a firm did not have data for three consecutive years, we considered the following two years’ data values. We performed this extrapolation using Stata’s ‘ipolate’ command. Our main results were found to hold when we considered the sample period without extrapolation (i.e., 2006–2017). These unreported results are available upon request.

  3. Following Fu et al. (2020), natural resources industries have the following four-digit SIC code ranges: 0800–0899, 1000–1119, and 1400–1499.

  4. We are grateful to one anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  5. Our developed-country sub-sample consisted of firms from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the USAs, while the emerging-country sub-sample was composed of firms from Brazil, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d’Angers (ESSCA), Lyon, France

    Ammar Ali Gull

  2. International School, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Ammar Ali Gull

  3. Department of Accounting, Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Nazim Hussain

  4. ESDES Business School, Catholic University of Lyon, Lyon, France

    Sana Akbar Khan

  5. King’s College Aberdeen, University of Aberdeen Business School, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, UK

    Zaheer Khan

  6. InnoLab, University of Vaasa, Wolffintie 34, 65200, Vaasa, Finland

    Zaheer Khan

  7. FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

    Asif Saeed

Authors
  1. Ammar Ali Gull
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  2. Nazim Hussain
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  3. Sana Akbar Khan
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  4. Zaheer Khan
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  5. Asif Saeed
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Correspondence to Ammar Ali Gull.

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Table 13 Definition of variables
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13.

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Gull, A.A., Hussain, N., Khan, S.A. et al. Governing Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling: The Effect of the Governance Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling. J Bus Ethics 185, 349–374 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05181-3

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