Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

It’S Who You Know That Counts: Board Connectedness And Csr Performance, Abu S. Amin, Lamia Chourou, Syed Kamal, Mahfuja Malik, Yang Zhao

WCBT Faculty Publications

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 …