Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
Highlights:
- We examine whether and how board connections affect the firm's corporate social responsibilities (CSR).
- We find that board connectedness is positively associated with CSR performance.
- Our findings suggest firms that operate in a complex business environment or require more advising benefit more from a well-networked board.
- Firms that are poorly governed, have high stock return volatility, low market capitalization, or low institutional ownership tend to benefit more from the well-connected board when the cost of acquiring information is higher.
- In addition, we show that independent directors’ abilities to gather information and resources from their networks can facilitate the transmission of information.
- Overall, our study documents the informational advantage of a network as the predominant channel that allows a well-connected board to improve a firm’s CSR performance.
DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2020.101662
Recommended Citation
Amin, A., Chourou, L., Kamal, S., Malik, M., & Zhao, Y. (2020). It’s who you know that counts: Board connectedness and CSR performance. Journal of Corporate Finance, 64, 101662. doi: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2020.101662
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Business Intelligence Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons
Comments
Available online 15 June 2020, 101662.
JEL Classification: G30, G39
Version posted is the authors' preprint.