CSR committees on boards: the impact of the external country level factors

This article explores the spread of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees in the European countries, examining whether and what country level external conditions can have a positive impact for their presence on boards. CSR committees are becoming increasingly important as tools of corporate governance to fight corruption, protect stakeholders, create shared value in the long run and, in general, reduce company’s exposure to responsibility failures in a context where the management of CSR is even more complicated. Taking into consideration more than 22,000 boards of European companies from 2000 to 2016, we first developed a descriptive analysis on the level of spread of CSR committees, and then quantitatively prove that the non-financial disclosure mandatory requirements have a positive impact on the presence of CSR committees on boards. This study contributes to the prior studies about the extent to which CSR committees have been adopted by companies and to the existing literature about corporate governance and CSR, supports legislators and regulators by information about the more effective actions to encourage companies in CSR committees’ establishment, and suggests companies a special corporate governance structure to better manage their global responsibility towards stakeholders. Finally, this research can be the starting point for future studies about what industry level factors are potential driver for CSR committees on boards