Does corporate governance influence environmental, social and governance disclosure practices of state‐owned enterprises? An international study

• Published in: Corporate social-responsibility and environmental management Vol. 31; no. 5; pp. 4715 - 4731
• Main Authors: Nicolo', Giuseppe, Andrades‐Peña, Francisco Javier
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.09.2024; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: accountability; board of directors; Boards of directors; Chief executive officers; Corporate governance; Disclosure; Environmental governance; ESG disclosure; Gender; International studies; Public enterprise; Regression analysis; Regression models; reporting; Social responsibility; state owned enterprises
• ISSN: 1535-3958; 1535-3966
• DOI: 10.1002/csr.2824

This paper provides fresh insights into the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure practices of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). To accomplish this study's research objective, we collected ESG and corporate governance data from Refinitiv Eikon's database on a balanced sample of 253 SOEs from 37 worldwide countries over 5 years (2018–2022), obtaining a total of 1265 observations. A battery of fixed and random effects panel regression models has been estimated to test the impact of board characteristics, like board size, board independence, board gender diversity, number of board meetings, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality and the presence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee, on overall and individual ESG disclosure scores of sampled SOEs. Results show that while board size and CEO duality negatively affect SOE ESG disclosure, board independence and gender diversity, as well as the number of board meetings and the existence of a CSR committee, exert a positive influence.