Detail Cantuman

Abstract We examine the relationship between corporate
governance and the extent of corporate social responsibility
(CSR) disclosures in the annual reports of Bangladeshi
companies. A legitimacy theory framework is adopted to
understand the extent to which corporate governance
characteristics, such as managerial ownership, public
ownership, foreign ownership, board independence, CEO
duality and presence of audit committee influence organisational
response to various stakeholder groups. Our results
suggest that although CSR disclosures generally have a
negative association with managerial ownership, such
relationship becomes significant and positive for exportoriented
industries. We also find public ownership, foreign
ownership, board independence and presence of audit
committee to have positive significant impacts on CSR
disclosures. However, we fail to find any significant impact
of CEO duality. Thus, our results suggest that pressures
exerted by external stakeholder groups and corporate
governance mechanisms involving independent outsiders
may allay some concerns relating to family influence on
CSR disclosure practices. Overall, our study implies that
corporate governance attributes play a vital role in ensuring
organisational legitimacy through CSR disclosures. The
findings of our study should be of interest to regulators and
policy makers in countries which share similar corporate
ownership and regulatory structures.
Keywords Corporate social responsibility  Corporate
governance  Legitimacy theory  Disclosure  Bangladesh