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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the participation of women in companies with financial performance. However, this relationship does not arise directly. The authors argue that the participation of women in the company’s staff has a positive effect on the creation of work-life balance (WLB) practices, due to women have traditionally assumed family responsibilities, and subsequently these practices positively affect financial performance. WLB practices are a tool to balance employees’ professional and personal goals.

This study aims to determine whether WLB practices mediate in the relationship between female participation in the workforce and financial performance on large companies listed in the Spanish Stock Exchange Index during the period from 2008 to 2013.

The main finding is that female participation in the workforce positively affects to the availability of WLB practices, but WLB practices are not a mediator to increase financial performance.

The study is a new contribution for academics and practitioners, since the WLB has a role of moderating variable; and the positive joint effect of female participation and WLB practices is tested over the company’s outcomes, instead of over the individual employee behaviour like in previous literature. In addition, this effect is studied in a country with economic recession where corporate WLB practices have increased in the last decade.

This chapter analyses how corporate governance codes in Europe approach CSR, devoting specific guidelines or recommendations or specifying the responsibility of implementing and disclosing CSR in the company.

Content analysis have been used in a sample of 27 corporate governance codes of 27 European countries, issued in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK), issued by governments (seven codes), national stock exchange (eight codes), industrial associations (six codes) and composites (six codes).

Only five out of 27 codes make and explicit reference to the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Two of them reflect the importance of a CSR Report (Slovenia and Spain), whereas the Spanish Code was the only code which devoted a section to the implementation of a CSR policy.

Although corporate governance codes could represent an opportunity to shift the focus from an implicit CSR approach to an explicit CSR approach in Europe, the truth is that content related to the issue and its level of specificity does not reflect that change yet.

Previous literature has not focused on the analysis of corporate governance codes from a CSR perspective, so the chapter is relevant for policy makers when it comes to updating corporate governance codes.

The purpose of this study is to provide more knowledge about the model to generate reputation and its relationship in the long term with companies’ strategy of social responsibility. Particularly, research is done to test whether there is a positive effect of firms’ social behaviour (corporate social responsibility [CSR]), analysing differences of intensity and consistency, on their corporate reputation (CR) and whether the current financial crisis is a factor that has changed the relationship between both variables (moderator factor).

This study uses a sample of 26 Spanish large firms of the Ibex35 index and covers an eight-year period from 2004 to 2011. To test the hypotheses of this research, a fixed-effects model was estimated using moderating regression analysis.

The results obtained show that, for the Spanish Ibex35 companies, CSR practices according to their consistency have a significant positive effect on CR and in turbulent environments, as in the current financial crisis, it has had a significant positive influence on the CSR-CR relationship.

Although a substantial number of empirical studies have examined the relationship between firms’ strategy and their performance, only a few of them have analysed the impact of the external environment on this relationship, whereby there is a need for longitudinal studies with different economic scenarios to achieve better knowledge of the CSR–CR relationship.

Child labour abolition is one of the four essential human rights identified by the International Labour Organisation and sustainable development goals. Although public organisations and governments have implemented a variety of actions to control business activity and protect children’s rights, cases of child labour adoption continue to be documented. This paper aims to establish multinational companies’ disclosure procedures regarding child labour and to identify some potential determining factors.

A content analysis approach is used on sustainability reports from multinational companies throughout the world to assess the overall amount of disclosure concerning child labour adoption and to generate a child labour disclosure (CLD) score. In addition, to better understand this issue, an empirical investigation was conducted on a sample of 85 multinational companies to identify the factors that influence CLD.

The findings show that there is a low degree of disclosure on this issue throughout the world and that stakeholder engagement has a positive impact on disclosure levels. In contrast, the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee and a CSR-based compensation policy has a negative influence on CLD.

The statistical results provide a unique viewpoint as they illustrate the amount of CLD using impression management theory, confirming the notion of negative event omission and text manipulation in developing the business image. These findings have important implications for literature development, as well as for managers, policymakers and stakeholder groups.

Extreme events undermine progress toward social sustainability and require an immediate response from the private sector. The authors propose a two-dimensional framework (response time and the scope of activities to the various stakeholders) to benchmark firms’ effectiveness in mitigating the threats to social sustainability post-disaster. This framework allows establishing a taxonomy of corporate emergency responses. Within such a framework, the authors group 218 corporate actions from 111 companies operating in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic into four corporate relief strategies: symbolic, selective, reactive, and supportive. The authors show how companies can use this framework as a guide to foster social sustainability in times of shock in an efficient way. Also, stakeholders can use this framework as a reference to distinguish corporate initiatives aiming to propel community resilience from corporate “covidwashing.”