The Impact of Government Ownership and Corporate Governance on the Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from UAE

• Published in: The Journal of Asian finance, economics, and business Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 851 - 861
• Main Authors: FARHAN, Ayda, FREIHAT, Abdel Razaq Farah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 한국유통과학회 30.01.2021; Korea Distribution Science Association
• Subjects: Moderating Effect; UAE; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); Government Ownership; Corporate Governance
• ISSN: 2288-4637; 2288-4645

The main objective of this study is to examine the government ownership effect on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR). Government ownership is assumed to affect the CSR either directly or indirectly. That is by moderating the association between corporate governance and CSR. Publicly listed companies on the UAE capital markets (Abu Dhabi and Dubai) from 2010-2013 constituted the study sample. Panel data regression analyses and random effect model is used to examine the effects of board size, board independence, and audit committee characteristics on CSR. Government ownership is used as a moderator variable. The result showed that the existence of government ownership has a moderator effect on the association between corporate governance mechanisms and the CSR. Precisely, the research revealed that the audit committee characteristics become more effective in improving the firm's CSR when the government owns shares in the organization. The main contribution of this study is to examine how firm ownership structure influences good corporate governance and CSR in the UAE. The study contributes to the CSR literature by merging between the existence of governmental ownership and the power to enforce the implementation of corporate governance in an emerging country.