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In light of the conflict between scholarly findings supporting corporate social responsibility’s positive impact on corporate financial performance (CFP) versus findings showing negative impact on CFP, the academic literature has reoriented toward determining the contingency conditions that affect the underlying relationships. This paper aims to investigate two potential contingency factors, the chief executive officer’s (CEO) corporate social responsibility (CSR) expertise and board members’ CSR expertise.

This paper uses an unbalanced panel of archival data of 168 firms from the S&P 500 index for the period 2006–2013. The analytic model is estimated using the feasible generalized least squares regression method with heteroscedasticity and panel-specific AR1 autocorrelation.

The findings reinforce the perspective that CSR positively affects the firm’s financial performance. The authors find that firms realize optimal results from their CSR investments when both the board and the CEO have greater CSR expertise. In other words, both, CEO CSR expertise and board CSR expertise positively impact the CSR–CFP relationship.

The findings of this study advance the literature in three important areas, namely, the social responsibility–financial responsibility relationship, the governance literature and upper echelons theory. First, the theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence highlight that CSR–CFP relationship is at least partly contingent upon the CEO’s and board members’ CSR expertise. Second, this study introduces two important variables: the CEO and board’s CSR experience as proxies for their CSR expertise. Future researchers may consider decomposing the various components of CSR to study the differential impact of each component on financial performance.

First, this study finds that while the CEO CSR expertise may be of value for the firm, such value can only be realized under a capable and effective board that has adequate knowledge in the field of CSR. Second, this study shows that the best-case scenario for firms occurs when both its board members and CEO have had greater prior CSR involvement that contributed to their knowledge inventory and skills. Greater knowledge and skills enhance the quality of the decisions that comprise the firm’s CSR strategy.

While it seems intuitive that prior CSR knowledge and expertise should lead to more and better CSR initiatives, there are few if any studies that empirically examine the effects of this premise on a firm’s financial performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study appears to be the first that directly tests the relationship between executives’ CSR experience and firm performance.

This study aims to explore the set of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee attributes that may enhance CSR performance and CSR strategy formation and reduce CSR controversies.[AQ1] Towards this end, the study also explores the differences between companies with and without CSR committees in terms of these three CSR performance facets.

The study uses a sample of financial times stock exchange (FTSE) 100 non-financial companies in 2015–2017. Kruskal-Wallis test is conducted to test the differences in CSR performance in firms with CSR board-level committee, CSR management committee and no committees. Additionally, a regression model is used to explore the attributes of CSR committees that lead to better/less CSR performance and CSR strategy/CSR controversies. A two-stage least squares regression model was used as a robustness check.

Firms with board CSR committee have better CSR performance and CSR strategy and lower CSR controversies than both firms with no CSR committees and firms with a CSR management committee. Regression results show that CSR committees that are predominantly consisting of independent board members, chaired by a female director and setting more meetings have better CSR performance. Additionally, CSR committees were found to have lower CSR controversies when having more independent directors and a chair with CSR expertise. CSR strategy was better with the CSR committee represented by a larger group of members.

This study makes several contributions to the sustainability governance literature and regulatory/guidance interfaces. There is extant literature examining audit committee attributes and their effects on various firm outcomes. The same can be said on the regulations of the audit committee. CSR committees’ composition and benefits are, by far, less regulated and largely under-researched. Hence, this paper is considered an early attempt to explore the CSR performance improvements a CSR committee may bring and the composition that would bring better CSR performance.

This paper aims to analyze the impact that sustainable board governance has on corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the European capital market because of the current debate of future European regulations on the topic.

Based on a legitimacy and stakeholder theoretical framework, the author conducts a structured literature review and includes 86 quantitative peer-reviewed empirical (archival) studies on board gender diversity, sustainability board expertise and sustainability-related executive compensation and their impact on CSR variables.

Gender board diversity represents the most important variable in this literature review. The included categories of sustainable board governance positively influence both the total CSR and environmental outputs.

A detailed analysis of sustainable board governance proxies is needed in future archival research to differentiate between symbolic and substantive use of CSR. In view of the current European reform initiatives on sustainable corporate governance in line with the EU Green Deal project, future research should also analyze the interactions between the included sustainable board governance variables and their contributions to CSR.

As both stakeholder demands’ on CSR outputs and CSR washing have increased since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, firms should be aware of a substantive integration of sustainability within their boards of directors (e.g. because of composition and compensation) to increase their CSR efforts and long-term firm reputation.

This analysis makes useful contributions to prior research by focusing on sustainable board governance as a key determinant of CSR outputs on the European capital market. The European Commission’s future evidence-based regulations [e.g. the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDD)] should be promoted.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of sustainability committee (SC) characteristics (size, independence, the number of meetings, and expertise) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in the Indian context.

This research measures the CSR performance of 60 Indian non-financial firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) over the period 2014 to 2019 using the ASSET4 environmental, social, and governance database. The authors resorted to fixed-effect panel regressions to capture the individual effect present in the data.

The results show that CSR performance is positively and significantly influenced by SC independence, size, and expertise. However, the number of SC meetings does not affect CSR performance. The results also demonstrate that CSR performance is positively and significantly associated with board independence.

This paper adds to the existing literature by examining the effect of SC characteristics on the firms' CSR performance in India as one of the oldest stock markets in the world, which would help test the validity of the agency and stakeholder theories in an old and big emerging market context.

The findings allow managers to understand the mechanisms affecting CSR performance and how the characteristics of the SC can participate in its growth and development. Moreover, this study has implications for researchers, suggesting that future CSR studies should take into account the SC characteristics as potential determinants that explain CSR, such as CSR activities and CSR practices and strategies.

The present research contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of SC characteristics on the firms' CSR performance, thereby providing additional evidence on the issue. Several previous studies have examined the link between corporate governance and CSR performance with a focus on external oversight mechanisms, namely institutional ownership or analyst coverage or internal oversight mechanisms, such as board gender composition, board independence, separation of board Chairperson and CEO roles, and the existence of SC on the board, but these studies did not examine the SC characteristics. The present research fills the gap.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between a chief finance officer's (CFO's) financial expertise and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper's sample consists of firms from the 2005 S&P 500 Index. Data on CSR come from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD), Inc. Data on CFO financial expertise were had collected. Consistent with prior research, experience (tenure), education (masters of business administration degree), and professional experience (certified public accountant designation) are used to measure the CFO's financial expertise.

Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2005, it is found that CFO experience (measured by tenure) is positively related to CSR at a significant level. In addition, the results indicate that CSR activities are not related to the CFO's education (measured as a Master's of Business Administration degree) or accounting expertise (measured as certified public accountant designation). The findings suggest that CFOs with more experience engage in more CSR activities than CFOs with less experience.

This study is valuable for several reasons: First, the study contributes to both the CSR literature and the CFO financial expertise literature by delivering new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and corporate social responsibility. Second, the study provides useful information to boards of directors, corporations and investors on certain CFO characteristics associated with effective CSR. Third, the study provides empirical evidence to support the suggested shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co‐driver of a firm's long‐term strategy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of board and audit committee characteristics on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Iranian companies listed in stock exchanges.

This is a descriptive-correlational and an applied research. The statistical population of this research is all companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange and the research period is from 2012 to 2018. Using screening method a sample of 150 companies was selected. Multivariate regression and the software Eviews 10 were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The results indicated that board size had a significant effect on CSR; board independence had a significant effect on CSR; managerial ownership did not have a significant effect on CSR; CEO duality did not have a significant effect on CSR; audit committee size had a significant effect on CSR; audit committee independence had a significant effect on CSR; and financial expertise of audit committee members had a significant effect on CSR.

The present study is the first research performed on the effect of board and audit committee characteristics on CSR in Iran. The results of this study contribute to the literature on the effect of board and audit committee characteristics on CSR and provide suggestions for capital market participants. CSR helps reduce asymmetric distribution of information among the internal and external organizational entities and reduce agency problems and conflicts among different groups. Based on the results, an effective audit committee as an effective mechanism enhances the credibility of financial and non-financial reporting such as social responsibility, which means that an effective audit committee can improve the level of voluntary disclosure of information through effective oversight of the reporting process. It is also suggested that companies focus on audit committee characteristics to increase the level of CSR.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationships among the presence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee, politicians on CSR committee and CSR disclosure in 10-Ks using data from S&P 500 firms during 2005–2013.

The authors manually check the information of CSR committees as well as committees with CSR/sustainability functions from proxy statements (DEF 14a). CSR disclosure from 10-Ks is obtained by using a Python library named Beautiful Soup 4 to clean the rough data from the raw format files from EDGAR.

The authors find that superior sustainability governance is associated with more voluntary CSR disclosure in their 10-K reports. More importantly, they find that CSR committee members with working experiences as politicians play an important role to improve CSR disclosure. In the robustness tests, they find that CSR committee and the politicians on CSR committee are also associated with high KLD CSR score ratings.

The finding in our paper that politicians on CSR committee can enhance CSR efforts may provide practical implications to some companies. Companies may consider inviting people who have political connections and experience to serve on CSR committees.

The authors find the presence of politicians on CSR committee is associated with CSR disclosure and CSR performance. That's new to the CSR governance literature and makes contributions to CSR disclosures and CSR committee expertise and skills.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse women on management board and their impact on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in two European two-tier countries.

The empirical quantitative paper covers a sample of German and Austrian companies which are listed at the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt and Vienna Stock Exchange for the business years 2010-2014 (1,019 firm-year observations). A correlation and regression analysis is conducted to measure a possible link between gender diversity and ESG performance in these European countries.

Multiple regressions state that female members in the management board do have a positive impact on ESG performance, measured by the AssetFour database by Thomson Reuters. Surprisingly, CSR expertise does not have a significant impact on ESG performance, whether the implementation of a CSR committee has a positive and significant link with ESG performance.

The analysis is the first empirical study that has a focus on Germany and Austria as the main representatives of the European two-tier system. Findings have implications for both users and public policy and suggest that current national and European regulations on corporate governance and CSR could have a great impact on future CSR performance and market reactions.

This study aims to focus on automated text analyses (ATAs) of sustainability and integrated reporting as a recent approach in empirical–quantitative research.

Based on legitimacy theory, the author conducts a structured literature review and includes 38 quantitative peer-reviewed empirical (archival) studies on specific determinants and consequences of sustainability and integrated reporting. The paper makes a clear distinction between analyses of reports due to readability, tone, similarity and specific topics. In line with prior studies, it is assumed that more readable reports with less tone and similarity relate to increased reporting quality.

In line with legitimacy theory, there are empirical indications that specific corporate governance variables, other firm characteristics and regulatory issues have a main impact on the quality of sustainability and integrated reporting. Furthermore, increased reporting quality leads to positive market reactions in line with the business case argument.

The author deduces useful recommendations for future research to motivate researchers to include ATA of sustainability and integrated reports. Among others, future research should recognize sustainable and behavioral corporate governance determinants and analyze other stakeholders’ reactions.

As both stakeholders’ demands on sustainability and integrated reporting have increased since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, firms should increase the quality of reporting processes.

This analysis makes major contributions to prior research by including both sustainability and integrated reporting, based on ATA. ATAs play a prominent role in recent empirical research to evaluate possible drivers and consequences of sustainability and integrated reports. ATA may contribute to increased validity of empirical–quantitative research in comparison to classical manual content analyses, especially due to future CSR washing analyses.

This paper aims to examine the impact of three key factors — corporate social responsibility (CSR) awareness, CSR affordability and CSR management system (CSRMS) sophistication—on the CSR performance of Japanese firms.

Using responses to 36 items developed on the Global CSR standard of ISO26000, two CSR indexes were constructed to assess the CSR management system sophistication and performance of Japanese firms. The relationship between the three key variables (CSR awareness, affordability and management system sophistication) and CSR performance was then examined through a partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation model. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 146 firms.

The results of the study found a positive relationship between CSR performance and three exogenous variables (CSR awareness, affordability and management system sophistication). Furthermore, the study found that CSRMS sophistication played a mediating role in the relationship between CSR performance and firms' CSR awareness and affordability.

The study was limited to examining the CSR practices of a major province in Japan, which may hinder the generalisation of the findings to the rest of the country. Moreover, the data used for assessing the variables in this study were self-reported by the participating firms, in addition to being cross-sectional. The findings of this study clarified areas that policymakers, including Japan's business associations–Keidanren and Keizai Doyukai, and other relevant parties need to focus on for further improving CSR performances of Japanese firms.

This study highlights the role CSR awareness, affordability and CSRMS sophistication play in improving CSR performance. On the one hand, it identifies the critical role CSRMS plays in mediating the relationship among CSR performance, awareness and affordability. On the other hand, it advances CSR theory providing insight for practitioners to generate positive CSR outcomes.