Study On The Effect Of Board Governance Structure On Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures

With the development of Chinese society and economy, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) becomes the focal point in particular which public pays attention, it is also an important thought to constructs harmonious society in our country. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical and theoretic study on the relevance of the board governance and corporate social responsibility information disclosure. Three questions are studied in normative research:the function of directorate, the structure of board, the governance value of corporate social responsibility information disclosure. After forward hypothesis and definition of variables,423 listed companies in Shanghai stock exchanges in 2008 are selected as the samples for further empirical study:the relationship between the governance structure of the board and corporate disclosure on social responsibilities.As theoretical analysis we find that:(1) we consider the evolution of the governance function of directorate, shareholders'wealth maximum theory did not identify corporate social responsibility as the aims of governance. But with the development of stakeholder theory and the transformation of economy circumstances, the kind of board governance aim has displayed defect increasingly. The corporate' control power and financial-right disposing should be not only internal disposition but also expand to include external disposition, and the stakeholder theory have inherent consistency with the theory of maximum of enterprise value in fact; (2) There are different kinds of board governances in the world, after the corporate social responsibility information disclosure appears, academic circles commence to discuss whether there exists the optimal board governance structure and what mechanism and controlling methods are effective. Five aspects to the board characteristics which are the member's structure, leadership structure, size factor, special committee structure and compensation incentive system may result different governance efficiency; (3) With the public accumulates more consciousness on environment and law, the right of knowing the economic consequences of enterprise is getting recognition from common people. The stakeholder gradually finds the value of information disclosure on corporate social responsibilities. Through the analysis of the CRS information's supply and demand, we analyses the value of voluntary information disclosure, then sums up the advantages and disadvantages of government regulation. In order to realize the governance motivation of board and ways of maximizing stakeholder value, Benefit-cost Analysis is used for model building.Major empirical results of this paper show that:(1) With independent director ratio increasing and directorate size expanding, the CRS information disclosure manner of listed company's increases; (2) if we take the information asymmetry degree into account, the combination of director and general manager don't have a significant effect on disclosure manner. The proportion of directors' shareholding is irrelevance too for interest's synergistic effect.The contributions of this paper contain:(1)This paper is the first empirically tests influencing the board governance factors of CRS information disclosure in China; (2)Provide an theoretic framework to realize the governance motivation of board in the disclosure process of CRS information; (3)Based on Ecology Corporate Governance theory, analysis how to protect the vulnerable stakeholder groups from being exploited and violated by the strong stakeholder groups.