Why do Firms Care about Corporate Social Responsibility? The Role of Corporate Governance and Board Structure

The topic of corporate social responsibility has become very relevant today. There are two points of view on this topic: companies must carry CSR and the opposite, and the first prevails. The aim of this work is to measure the impact of the structure of the board of directors on assessing corporate social responsibility. Using econometric analysis methods (regression on panel data with fixed effects) on data received from the Thomson Reuters platform for 500 US public companies from 2012 to 2018, we found that factors such as the proportion of women on the board of directors, the proportion of independent Directors, the frequency of meetings and the number of board members have a significant and positive impact on the assessment of CSR. The uniqueness of the work lies in the fact that we evaluate the direct impact on the assessment, that is, how much the numerical value of CSR will change with changes in the structure of the board, and not as a common sign (whether the organization bears corporate social responsibility or not) or the degree of disclosure.