Corporate governance as a corporate social responsibility reporting determinant

Bank failures following the 2008 global financial crisis have increased the pressure for banks to integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their core business. One manifestation of this pressure is the increased focus on CSR reporting of banks. Considering this, the objective of this paper is to determine the association between corporate governance characteristics and CSR reporting of listed banks. Logistic regressions with bank-specific fixed effects are run on a global sample of 285 listed commercial banks from 35 countries. The analysis covers a period from 2005 to 2015. The results show that board size and gender diversity are positively associated with banks’ CSR disclosure decisions. After controlling for CSR commitment indicators, the presence of CSR Committee, joining Global Compact, and joining the Equator Principles exhibited a strong positive association with CSR disclosure. This indicates that diverse boards and formal CSR structures could lead banks to disclosing a CSR report. Thus, by properly influencing these indicators, for example, through some formal governance requirements, CSR reporting could be improved.