Banks’ CSR reporting – Do women have a say?
ISSN: 1472-0701
Article publication date: 23 April 2020
Issue publication date: 23 May 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to determine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting of listed banks and female representation on boards while controlling for the impact of gender quotas.
Design/methodology/approach
Logistic regressions are used with bank fixed effects on a global sample of 285 commercial banks from 2005 to 2017.
Findings
There exists a positive association between the proportion of women on board and banks’ CSR disclosure. Positive association remains also after quota corrections for banks with either below- or above-quota female representation. Further, adding more women to boards than required by quota could affect boards’ CSR reporting in masculine countries but not in feminine countries.
Research limitations/implications
The results are not generalizable to smaller listed banks and the used estimation approach does not enable to detect causality.
Practical implications
Policymakers interested in improving banks’ CSR reporting could introduce gender quotas.
Social implications
Gender quotas can enforce banks’ sustainable behaviour.
Originality/value
First, it is the first study to thoroughly control for gender quotas while investigating the association between female representation on boards and CSR disclosure. Second, this paper moves forward from the so-far predominant concentration on single-country studies on banks’ CSR reporting. Third, this paper covers the aspect of a country’s masculinity-femininity as a factor that could influence the association between CSR disclosure and female representation.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the insightful comments received from the members of the finance research group at TalTech School of Business and Governance. Special thanks go to Pavlo Illiashenko and Karsten Staehr for their constructive feedback. Funding: This work was supported by Tallinn University of Technology under Grant B57 “Efficiency in Financial Sector in Light of Changing Regulatory Environment” and by the Doctoral School in Economics and Innovation, supported by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund (Tallinn University of Technology ASTRA project “TTÜ Development Program 2016-2022”, project code: 2014-2020.4.01.16-0032). This paper represents the work conducted in connection with these grants. The funding providers had no role in the research process from study design to submission.
Citation
Tapver, T., Laidroo, L. and Gurvitš-Suits, N.A. (2020), "Banks’ CSR reporting – Do women have a say?", Corporate Governance, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 639-651. https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-11-2019-0338
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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