CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF THE EXTANT LITERATURE AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Corporate social responsibility has provided a 'hot-bed' for CSR as corporate scandals of large firms like Volkswagen, Nike, Shell, Exon, and others have shifted stakeholders attention from maximizing short- term economic returns to long-term social benefits. Modern firms are under more pressure to demonstrate ethical behavior than ever. Effective corporate governance (CG) enhances ethical corporate behavior that helps firms meet emerging accountability challenges. Management researchers have extensively studied the relationship between various CG aspects and CSR outcomes like performance and disclosure. Yet the results are mixed. Keeping in view the lack of consensus, this study aims to systematically synthesize existing quantitative research on CG-CSR nexus and provide concrete directions for future research. To address our research question, we conducted a meta-analysis of 88 primary studies using random effect models. The dataset shows 12 different governance mechanisms which have been studied in the literature in relation with CSR performance and disclosure. The effect size analysis reveals all of the governance mechanisms are strongly associated with CSR disclosure except CEO duality. Board size and the presence of CSR committee on board are however closest predictors of disclosure. Unlike these results, not all of the governance mechanisms are relevant for CSR performance. This suggests that not all of the governance mechanisms are equally effective for performance and disclosure. This raises a question about the nature of relationship between CG and CSR outcomes and guides the future research by suggesting that the researchers should take into consideration the fact that CG mechanisms do not act independently to each other and there are complementarities and/or substitutive effects between CG mechanisms when affecting the CSR outcomes. This paper contributes by setting guidelines for theorization process and by providing first meta-analytical review for CSR performance and disclosure separately.