Who Should Be on a Board Corporate Social Responsibility Committee?
Résumé
How to design the composition of a board corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee in order to positively impact corporate social performance is the focus of this empirical investigation. Corporate social performance includes social, environmental and economic performances. We conduct binary logistic regression analysis on firm-level data of year 2012 from the Bloomberg World Index of 178 non-financial companies having created a board CSR committee and study the influence on corporate social performance of demographical components of this board sub-committee specialized in CSR issues. Proxy for corporate social performance is the membership of companies within the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. We propose a board CSR committee composition effectiveness model and find evidence for higher corporate social performance being more likely in companies having a larger proportion of independent directors within the board CSR committee, where the chief executive officer is not a member of this committee, with a female chairing this committee and with a smaller size of this committee. For companies who intend to create a board CSR committee, or wish to improve the effectiveness of their existing board CSR committee, the results of this study are useful to decide who should be part of this committee.