Hi Ibrahim,

Do you mean the fact of having to disclose, for instance, that your board consists of all white males in the top 5% earning bracket for the nation (who have been assiduously selected so as to avoid conflict and encourage "group think" in board deliberations)?  If so, I don't think the fact that a corporation has to disclose who the members of the board are in its annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (if its stock is publicly traded in the U.S.) has an effect on the quality of Corporate Governance (CG). 

Indeed, I think it is good CG that influences a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) .  With good CG, a firm will have a plan in place to maintain diversity on the Board of Directors in order to avoid the pitfalls of "group think" -- one of which is the inability to critically evaluate proposals put before the board for approval.  With good CG, the board will be comprised of a membership that represents the diverse stakeholders in a firm's operations.  And, for the most part stakeholders are not all affluent white males; indeed, not even the shareholders/investors/owners of publicly traded firms are all affluent white males; consider, for instance, institutional investors such as unions or pension funds.  Hence, it would be asinine to have a board so constituted as to get no input from those who might hold opposing viewpoints to those of the majority board membership.  In fact, in some Scandinavian countries, it has been legislatively mandated that the membership of corporate boards be 50% female.  

In short, it is antithetical to good CG to have a board of directors that lacks diversity.  Given that the upper echelon executives in the firm (President, CEO, CFO) are likely to be affluent white males, a board of the same racial, gender, and class make-up would necessarily be a rubber stamp board.  ("Oh yes, by golly, that's a keen idea; let's do away with wages and pay our factory workers by the piece!")

Gwen

Thanks lot for your reach comments dear Alexis

I'm a bit confused here. Your question, as I can gather relates to 'quality of CSR disclosure', and not necessarily quality of CSR practice. These are two different things. Of course, a company's corporate governance, including its board composition, board size, etc, will influence the quality of its CSR practices. A company with good CSR policy would naturally like to disclose this in many forms because of the positive effect on the company's reputation of such disclosures, and there are a number of factors (internal and external) that will influence the nature and the quality of such disclosures, including the nature of the company's business and the industry to which it belongs, it's size, board composition, regulatory requirements influencing such disclosures, etc. For example, a company in the chemical or manufacturing industry will be inclined to disclose their CSR policy in greater detail than a company in the finance industry. These are all internal factors. But there are also other external factors, which are likely to influence the quality of such disclosures, including international affiliations of the company and their influence on the activities of the company, and global reporting standards requirements. But please, remember that there's a difference between CSR policy/practice and the quality of CSR disclosure. I hope this helps!

Thanks dear Elewechi Okike for your details answer and great for you

There are a huge of literature on the association between corporate governance mechanisms and quality and quantity of corporate social responsibility disclosure. This is a more recent review article on corporate social responsibility disclosure. I hope to find interesting points.

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S073746071500004X/1-s2.0-S073746071500004X-main.pdf?_tid=345257ea-dff8-11e4-b952-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1428721965_5c02944bd1758c21afea76d34bb7652c

Thank you Saeed for the link to this paper - I plan to read it as soon as possible. I am looking at the role of legislation to incentivise socially responsible behaviour and decision making in UK (s172 UK Companies Act 2006) and Australia which has a principles based rather than legislation based approach to corporate governance. If you have any thoughts of other papers which might be useful for me could you post the links please.

Yes there is a relationship. That's why there is a considerable research in this regard. You may check recent studies which include your aforementioned variables as well as others.

yes I feel there is a strong connect between the two. Better Governnace is reflected thru better CSR disclosures. 

Thank dear shilpa parkhi for your comments

Dear Abdulnaser,

We should be careful with regard to conclusions from corporate governance architecture of a firm towards its CSR disclosure. I am currently working at a paper where I analyse annual report disclosure by keywords. There are surprising results which show that a corporation with a healthy corporate governance may be a tail light in CSR reporting.

Paul

you may need to read the following article.

Journal of Management

Vol. XX No. X, Month XXXX 1 –24

DOI: 10.1177/0149206316653804

© The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permissions:

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Complementary or Substitutive Effects?

Corporate Governance Mechanisms and

Corporate Social Responsibility

Won-Yong Oh

University of Calgary

Young Kyun Chang

Sogang University

Tae-Yeol Kim