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Does gender diversity moderate the relationship between CSR committees and Sustainable Development Goals disclosure? Evidence from Latin American companies

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the association between the presence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) disclosure, as well as the moderating role of gender diversity in this relation.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consists of 897 annual observations from 238 firms from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru for 2018–2020. The data were collected from the Refinitiv database. The proposed model and hypotheses were tested using the feasible generalized least squares estimation technique with heteroscedasticity and panel-specific AR1 autocorrelation.

Findings

The results reveal that the presence of CSR committees positively influences the SDGs. Gender diversity positively moderates the relationship between CSR committees and SDGs. Leverage and firm size also positively impact the SDGs. On the other hand, board size and CEO duality negatively affect SDGs disclosure.

Research limitations/implications

This study extends the scope of stakeholder theory by suggesting that CSR committees and gender diversity enable a better relationship for the firm with its stakeholders.

Practical implications

The findings support policymakers and managers in improving sustainability disclosure. In addition, the results demonstrate the importance of CSR committees and gender diversity to meet the stakeholders' demands.

Social implications

This study demonstrates how firms can improve sustainability issues through gender diversity and CSR committees.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study complements previous literature by being the first to examine the moderating effect of gender diversity on the association between CSR committees and SDGs disclosure in the Latin American context.

Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals; Disclosure; CSR committee; Gender diversity; Stakeholder theory; Latin America

1. Introduction

In 2015, the United Nations established the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Martínez-Ferrero & García-Meca, 2020Martínez-Ferrero, J., & García-Meca, E. (2020). Internal corporate governance strength as a mechanism for achieving sustainable development goals. Sustainable Development, 28(5), 1189–1198.; Yamane & Kaneko, 2022Yamane, T., & Kaneko, S. (2022). The sustainable development goals as new business norms: A survey experiment on stakeholder preferences. Ecological Economics, 191, 107236, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107236.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021....
). The emergence of the SDGs has raised concerns about the need to create a sustainable future for all (Erin, Bamigboye, & Oyewo, 2022Erin, O. A., Bamigboye, O. A., & Oyewo, B. (2022). Sustainable development goals (SDG) reporting: an analysis of disclosure. Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies, doi: 10.1108/JAEE-02-2020-0037.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JAEE-02-2020-003...
). The 2030 Agenda, signed by all UN member states, consists of 17 goals and 169 targets with more than 500 indicators that assess the implementation of the SDGs (Bandari, Moallemi, Lester, Downie, & Bryan, 2022Bandari, R., Moallemi, E. A., Lester, R. E., Downie, D., & Bryan, B. A. (2022). Prioritising sustainable development goals, characterising interactions, and identifying solutions for local sustainability. Environmental Science & Policy, 127, 325–336, doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2021.09.016.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.09...
; Calabrese, Costa, Gastaldi, Levialdi Ghiron, & Villazon Montalvan, 2021Calabrese, A., Costa, R., Gastaldi, M., Levialdi Ghiron, N., & Villazon Montalvan, R. A. (2021). Implications for sustainable development goals: A framework to assess company disclosure in sustainability reporting. Journal of Cleaner Production, 319, 128624, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128624.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
; Lu et al., 2021Lu, J., Liang, M., Zhang, C., Rong, D., Guan, H., Mazeikaite, K., & Streimikis, J. (2021). Assessment of corporate social responsibility by addressing sustainable development goals. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(2), 686–703, doi: 10.1002/csr.2081.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2081...
). This agenda represents a strategic plan for the long term (Pizzi, Del Baldo, Caputo, & Venturelli, 2022Pizzi, S., Del Baldo, M., Caputo, F., & Venturelli, A. (2022). Voluntary disclosure of sustainable development goals in mandatory non-financial reports: The moderating role of cultural dimension. Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting, 33(1), 83–106, doi: 10.1111/jifm.12139.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jifm.12139...
). The SDGs are interconnected (Cosma, Venturelli, Schwizer, & Boscia, 2020Cosma, S., Venturelli, A., Schwizer, P., & Boscia, V. (2020). Sustainable development and European banks: A non-financial disclosure analysis. Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156146.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156146...
; Olabi et al., 2022Olabi, A. G., Obaideen, K., Elsaid, K., Wilberforce, T., Sayed, E. T., Maghrabie, H. M., & Abdelkareem, M. A. (2022). Assessment of the pre-combustion carbon capture contribution into sustainable development goals SDGs using novel indicators. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 153, 111710, doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.111710.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.1117...
; United Nations, 2022United Nations. (2022). Sustainable development goals. Retrieved from www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals
www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goa...
) and aim to address global challenges in various fields such as health, education, economic security and environmental issues (Krasodomska, Simnett, & Street, 2021Krasodomska, J., Simnett, R., & Street, D. L. (2021). Extended external reporting assurance: Current practices and challenges. Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting, 32(1), 104–142, doi: 10.1111/jifm.12127.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jifm.12127...
).

As a result, SDGs “are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity” (United Nations, 2022United Nations. (2022). Sustainable development goals. Retrieved from www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals
www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goa...
). Accordingly, SDGs refer to supreme goals comprising equitable economic development, social development and human rights (Joseph et al., 2019Joseph, C., Gunawan, J., Madi, N., Janggu, T., Rahmat, M., & Mohamed, N. (2019). Realising sustainable development goals via online integrity framework disclosure: Evidence from Malaysian and Indonesian local authorities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 215, 112–122, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.0...
). The SDGs build on the successful Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which fought poverty (Ogunmakinde, Egbelakin, & Sher, 2022Ogunmakinde, O. E., Egbelakin, T., & Sher, W. (2022). Contributions of the circular economy to the UN sustainable development goals through sustainable construction. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 178, 106023, doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.106023.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021...
). However, unlike the MDGs, which focus on developing countries, the SDGs aim at all countries, including developed countries (Belmonte-Ureña, Plaza-Úbeda, Vazquez-Brust, & Yakovleva, 2021Belmonte-Ureña, L. J., Plaza-Úbeda, J. A., Vazquez-Brust, D., & Yakovleva, N. (2021). Circular economy, degrowth and green growth as pathways for research on sustainable development goals: A global analysis and future agenda. Ecological Economics, 185, 107050, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107050.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021....
; Hummel & Szekely, 2022Hummel, K., & Szekely, M. (2022). Disclosure on the sustainable development goals – Evidence from Europe. Accounting in Europe, 19(1), 1–38, doi: 10.1080/17449480.2021.1894347.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2021.18...
) and recognize the importance of the private sector (Izzo, Ciaburri, & Tiscini, 2020Izzo, M. F., Ciaburri, M., & Tiscini, R. (2020). The challenge of sustainable development goal reporting: The first evidence from Italian listed companies. In Sustainability, 12(8), doi: 10.3390/su12083494.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083494...
). Moreover, as compliance with the SDGs is a global imperative, firms disclose sustainable practices to increase dialogue with stakeholders and legitimize their operations (Tsalis, Malamateniou, Koulouriotis, & Nikolaou, 2020Tsalis, T. A., Malamateniou, K. E., Koulouriotis, D., & Nikolaou, I. E. (2020). New challenges for corporate sustainability reporting: United Nations' 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the sustainable development goals. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 27(4), 1617–1629, doi: 10.1002/csr.1910.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1910...
).

Although SDGs disclosure is voluntary for companies (Cosma et al., 2020Cosma, S., Venturelli, A., Schwizer, P., & Boscia, V. (2020). Sustainable development and European banks: A non-financial disclosure analysis. Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156146.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156146...
; Yu et al., 2020Yu, S., Sial, M. S., Tran, D. K., Badulescu, A., Thu, P. A., & Sehleanu, M. (2020). Adoption and implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in China – Agenda 2030. In Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156288.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156288...
), there has been an increase in SDGs reporting (Hummel & Szekely, 2022Hummel, K., & Szekely, M. (2022). Disclosure on the sustainable development goals – Evidence from Europe. Accounting in Europe, 19(1), 1–38, doi: 10.1080/17449480.2021.1894347.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2021.18...
; Pizzi et al., 2022Pizzi, S., Del Baldo, M., Caputo, F., & Venturelli, A. (2022). Voluntary disclosure of sustainable development goals in mandatory non-financial reports: The moderating role of cultural dimension. Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting, 33(1), 83–106, doi: 10.1111/jifm.12139.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jifm.12139...
) because sustainable practice disclosure increases firm value, shareholder return and earnings per share (García-Sánchez, Hussain, Khan, & Martínez-Ferrero, 2022García-Sánchez, I.-M., Hussain, N., Khan, S.-A., & Martínez-Ferrero, J. (2022). Assurance of corporate social responsibility reports: Examining the role of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 29(1), 89–106, doi: 10.1002/csr.2186.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2186...
). Further, sustainable disclosure helps to legitimize the firm's activities (Deegan, 2019Deegan, C. M. (2019). Legitimacy theory: Despite its enduring popularity and contribution, time is right for a necessary makeover. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 32(8), 2307–2329, doi: 10.1108/AAAJ-08-2018-3638.
https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2018-363...
). The SDGs represent a globally accepted standard for companies worldwide (Diaz‐Sarachaga, 2021Diaz‐Sarachaga, J. M. (2021). Monetizing impacts of Spanish companies toward the sustainable development goals. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(4), doi: 10.1002/csr.2149.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2149...
), and the SDGs disclosure affects the companies' engagement with sustainable goals (Kücükgül, Cerin, & Liu, 2022Kücükgül, E., Cerin, P., & Liu, Y. (2022). Enhancing the value of corporate sustainability: An approach for aligning multiple SDGs guides on reporting. Journal of Cleaner Production, 333, 130005, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.130005.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
). In this regard, SDGs disclosure determines the exact path and maps out the short- and long-term goals for companies to achieve sustainable development (Yu et al., 2020Yu, S., Sial, M. S., Tran, D. K., Badulescu, A., Thu, P. A., & Sehleanu, M. (2020). Adoption and implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in China – Agenda 2030. In Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156288.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156288...
). In addition, the SDGs disclosure is a stakeholder engagement strategy (Cosma et al., 2020Cosma, S., Venturelli, A., Schwizer, P., & Boscia, V. (2020). Sustainable development and European banks: A non-financial disclosure analysis. Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156146.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156146...
; Hummel & Szekely, 2022Hummel, K., & Szekely, M. (2022). Disclosure on the sustainable development goals – Evidence from Europe. Accounting in Europe, 19(1), 1–38, doi: 10.1080/17449480.2021.1894347.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2021.18...
; Yamane & Kaneko, 2022Yamane, T., & Kaneko, S. (2022). The sustainable development goals as new business norms: A survey experiment on stakeholder preferences. Ecological Economics, 191, 107236, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107236.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021....
), and financial analysts use the SDGs disclosure to attract potential investors, satisfying the interest of rating agencies (Garcia-Sanchez, Aibar-Guzman, Aibar-Guzman, & Rodriguez-Ariza, 2020Garcia-Sanchez, I.-M., Aibar-Guzman, B., Aibar-Guzman, C., & Rodriguez-Ariza, L. (2020). ‘Sell’ recommendations by analysts in response to business communication strategies concerning the sustainable development goals and the SDG compass. Journal of Cleaner Production, 255, 120194, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120194.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.1...
). Consequently, SDGs disclosure is increasingly required to explain the role of SDGs on business strategy and value creation (Izzo et al., 2020Izzo, M. F., Ciaburri, M., & Tiscini, R. (2020). The challenge of sustainable development goal reporting: The first evidence from Italian listed companies. In Sustainability, 12(8), doi: 10.3390/su12083494.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083494...
). Out of various aspects that influence sustainability disclosure, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee is one of the most prominent.

The CSR Committee is a subcommittee of the board of directors made up of members with knowledge and experience in the field (Martínez-Ferrero, Lozano, & Vivas, 2021Martínez-Ferrero, J., Lozano, M. B., & Vivas, M. (2021). The impact of board cultural diversity on a firm's commitment toward the sustainability issues of emerging countries: The mediating effect of a CSR committee. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(2), 675–685, doi: 10.1002/csr.2080.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2080...
). Its role is to address sustainable business practices (Fahad & Rahman, 2020Fahad, P., & Rahman, P. M. (2020). Impact of corporate governance on CSR disclosure. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 17(2-3), 155–167, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00082-1.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-020-00082...
), regulate the quality and quantity of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure (Khan, 2022Khan, M. A. (2022). ESG disclosure and firm performance: A bibliometric and meta analysis. Research in International Business and Finance, 61, 101668, doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101668.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101...
), oversee sustainability activities (Rupley, Brown, & Marshall, 2012Rupley, K. H., Brown, D., & Marshall, R. S. (2012). Governance, media and the quality of environmental disclosure. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 31(6), 610–640, doi: 10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2012.09.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.201...
), formulate the firm's CSR policy (Radu & Smaili, 2021Radu, C., & Smaili, N. (2021). Alignment Versus Monitoring: An Examination of the Effect of the CSR Committee and CSR-Linked Executive Compensation on CSR Performance. Journal of Business Ethics, pp. 1-19, doi: 10.1007/s10551-021-04904-2.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04904...
; Roy, Rao, & Zhu, 2022Roy, P. P., Rao, S., & Zhu, M. (2022). Mandatory CSR expenditure and stock market liquidity. Journal of Corporate Finance, 72, 102158, doi: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102158.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022....
) and prepare the annual report on CSR operations (Fuente, García-Sánchez, & Lozano, 2017Fuente, J. A., García-Sánchez, I. M., & Lozano, M. B. (2017). The role of the board of directors in the adoption of GRI guidelines for the disclosure of CSR information. Journal of Cleaner Production, 141, 737–750, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.09.155.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.0...
). Accordingly, the CSR committee is a corporate governance mechanism that helps to improve the firms' sustainability (Jarboui, Dammak Ben Hlima, & Bouaziz, 2022Jarboui, A., Dammak Ben Hlima, N, & Bouaziz, D. (2022). Do sustainability committee characteristics affect CSR performance? Evidence from India, Benchmarking: An International Journal, doi: 10.1108/BIJ-04-2021-0225.
https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-04-2021-0225...
) because it ensures that the sustainable perspective is integrated into the firm's strategy and converted into tangible actions (Saeed, Riaz, Liedong, & Rajwani, 2022Saeed, A., Riaz, H., Liedong, T. A., & Rajwani, T. (2022). The impact of TMT gender diversity on corporate environmental strategy in emerging economies. Journal of Business Research, 141, 536–551, doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.11.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.1...
). Moreover, because firms with a CSR committee invest more in sustainability, this committee helps the firm to have higher financial performance (Saeed, Noreen, Azam, & Tahir, 2021Saeed, A., Noreen, U., Azam, A., & Tahir, M. S. (2021). Does CSR governance improve social sustainability and reduce the carbon footprint: International evidence from the energy sector. Sustainability, 13(7), 3596, doi: 10.3390/su13073596.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073596...
).

Additionally, the relationship between the CSR committee and SDGs disclosure may be affected by gender diversity. Increasingly, there is pressure from different stakeholders to enhance the presence of women on the board of directors (Konadu, Ahinful, Boakye, & Elbardan, 2022Konadu, R., Ahinful, G. S., Boakye, D. J., & Elbardan, H. (2022). Board gender diversity, environmental innovation and corporate carbon emissions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, 121279, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121279.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021....
) because gender diversity increases a firm's competitive advantage (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008Campbell, K., & Mínguez-Vera, A. (2008). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(3), 435–451, doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9630-y.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9630-...
), reduces the likelihood of securities fraud (Cumming, Leung, & Rui, 2015Cumming, D., Leung, T. Y., & Rui, O. (2015). Gender diversity and securities fraud. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1572–1593, doi: 10.5465/amj.2013.0750.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0750...
), provides higher protection for minority shareholders (García-Meca, López-Iturriaga, & Santana-Martín, 2022García-Meca, E., López-Iturriaga, F. J., & Santana-Martín, D. J. (2022). Board gender diversity and dividend payout: The critical mass and the family ties effect. International Review of Financial Analysis, 79, 101973, doi: 10.1016/j.irfa.2021.101973.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2021.1019...
) and increases the firm's legitimacy (Valls Martínez, del, Martín-Cervantes, & Miralles-Quirós, 2022Valls Martínez, M., del, C., Martín-Cervantes, P. A., & Miralles-Quirós, MdM (2022). Sustainable development and the limits of gender policies on corporate boards in Europe. A comparative analysis between developed and emerging markets. European Research on Management and Business Economics, 28(1), 100168, doi: 10.1016/j.iedeen.2021.100168.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iedeen.2021.10...
). Further, gender diversity leads to superior economic performance (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008Campbell, K., & Mínguez-Vera, A. (2008). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(3), 435–451, doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9630-y.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9630-...
; Reguera-Alvarado, de Fuentes, & Laffarga, 2017Reguera-Alvarado, N., de Fuentes, P., & Laffarga, J. (2017). Does board gender diversity influence financial performance? Evidence from Spain. Journal of Business Ethics, 141(2), 337–350, doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2735-9.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2735-...
; Valls Martínez et al., 2022Valls Martínez, M., del, C., Martín-Cervantes, P. A., & Miralles-Quirós, MdM (2022). Sustainable development and the limits of gender policies on corporate boards in Europe. A comparative analysis between developed and emerging markets. European Research on Management and Business Economics, 28(1), 100168, doi: 10.1016/j.iedeen.2021.100168.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iedeen.2021.10...
). It is worth noting that women are more concerned than men about the welfare of others (Manita, Bruna, Dang, & Houanti, 2018Manita, R., Bruna, M. G., Dang, R., & Houanti, L. (2018). Board gender diversity and ESG disclosure: Evidence from the USA. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 19(2), doi: 10.1108/JAAR-01-2017-0024.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JAAR-01-2017-002...
). Accordingly, women connect firms to more diverse audiences than men because they have different experiences, beliefs and perspectives (Hillman, Shropshire, & Cannella, 2007Hillman, A. J., Shropshire, C., & Cannella, A. A., Jr, (2007). Organizational predictors of women on corporate boards. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 941–952, doi: 10.5465/amj.2007.26279222.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.2627922...
). These differences tend to be relevant insights for company stakeholders (Post & Byron, 2014Post, C., & Byron, K. (2014). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1546–1571, doi: 10.5465/amj.2013.0319.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0319...
). Therefore, women tend to appreciate stakeholder interests and demands better than men (Konadu et al., 2022Konadu, R., Ahinful, G. S., Boakye, D. J., & Elbardan, H. (2022). Board gender diversity, environmental innovation and corporate carbon emissions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, 121279, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121279.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021....
; Nerantzidis, Tzeremes, Koutoupis, & Pourgias, 2022Nerantzidis, M., Tzeremes, P., Koutoupis, A., & Pourgias, A. (2022). Exploring the black box: Board gender diversity and corporate social performance. Finance Research Letters, 48, 102987, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102987.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2022.10298...
).

Previous studies show the influence of CSR committees (Adel, Hussain, Mohamed, & Basuony, 2019Adel, C., Hussain, M. M., Mohamed, E. K. A., & Basuony, M. A. K. (2019). Is corporate governance relevant to the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure in large European companies? International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, 27(2), 301–332, doi: 10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-0118.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-01...
; Adnan, Hay, & van Staden, 2018Adnan, S. M., Hay, D., & van Staden, C. J. (2018). The influence of culture and corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure: A cross country analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 198, 820–832, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.0...
; Cucari, Falco, de, & Orlando, 2018Cucari, N., de Falco, S. E., & Orlando, B. (2018). Diversity of board of directors and environmental social governance: evidence from Italian listed companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(3), 250-266, doi: 10.1002/csr.1452.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1452...
; Fahad & Rahman, 2020Fahad, P., & Rahman, P. M. (2020). Impact of corporate governance on CSR disclosure. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 17(2-3), 155–167, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00082-1.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-020-00082...
; Handayati, Tham, Yuningsih, Rochayatun, & Meldona, 2022Handayati, P., Tham, Y. H., Yuningsih, Y., Rochayatun., & Meldona, S.. (2022). Audit quality, corporate governance, firm characteristics and CSR disclosures – Evidence from Indonesia. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 33(3), doi: 10.1002/jcaf.22548.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22548...
; Helfaya & Moussa, 2017Helfaya, A., & Moussa, T. (2017). Do board's corporate social responsibility strategy and orientation influence environmental sustainability disclosure? UK evidence. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(8), 1061–1077, doi: 10.1002/bse.1960.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1960...
; Jian, Jaaffar, Ooi, & Amran, 2017Jian, W. Z., Jaaffar, A. H., Ooi, S. K., & Amran, A. (2017). The effects of national culture, corporate governance and CSR governance on CSR disclosure quality. Global Business and Management Research, 9(4s), 298–314.; Miras-Rodríguez, Martínez-Martínez, & Escobar-Pérez, 2019Miras-Rodríguez, M. D., Martínez-Martínez, D., & Escobar-Pérez, B. (2019). Which corporate governance mechanisms drive CSR disclosure practices in emerging countries?. Sustainability, 11(1), doi: 10.3390/su11010061.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010061...
) and gender diversity (Ben-Amar, Chang, & McIlkenny, 2017Ben-Amar, W., Chang, M., & McIlkenny, P. (2017). Board gender diversity and corporate response to sustainability initiatives: Evidence from the carbon disclosure project. Journal of Business Ethics, 142(2), 369–383, doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2759-1.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2759-...
; Cicchiello, Fellegara, Kazemikhasragh, & Monferrà, 2021Cicchiello, A. F., Fellegara, A. M., Kazemikhasragh, A., & Monferrà, S. (2021). Gender diversity on corporate boards: How Asian and African women contribute on sustainability reporting activity. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 36(7), doi: 10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147.
https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147...
; Disli, Yilmaz, & Mohamed, 2022Disli, M., Yilmaz, M. K., & Mohamed, F. F. M. (2022). Board characteristics and sustainability performance: empirical evidence from emerging markets. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, 13(4), 929-952, doi: 10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-0313.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-03...
; Fernández-Gago, Cabeza-García, & Nieto, 2018Fernández-Gago, R., Cabeza-García, L., & Nieto, M. (2018). Independent directors' background and CSR disclosure. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(5), 991–1001, doi: 10.1002/csr.1515.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1515...
; García-Sánchez et al., 2022García-Sánchez, I.-M., Hussain, N., Khan, S.-A., & Martínez-Ferrero, J. (2022). Assurance of corporate social responsibility reports: Examining the role of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 29(1), 89–106, doi: 10.1002/csr.2186.
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; Gurol & Lagasio, 2022Gurol, B., & Lagasio, V. (2022). Women board members’ impact on ESG disclosure with environment and social dimensions: evidence from the European banking sector. Social Responsibility Journal, doi: 10.1108/SRJ-08-2020-0308.
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; Kiefner, Mohr, & Schumacher, 2022Kiefner, V., Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. (2022). Female executives and multinationals' support of the UN's sustainable development goals. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101304, doi: 10.1016/j.jwb.2021.101304.
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; Liao, Luo, & Tang, 2015Liao, L., Luo, L., & Tang, Q. (2015). Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure. The British Accounting Review, 47(4), 409–424, doi: 10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.00...
; Nadeem, Zaman, & Saleem, 2017Nadeem, M., Zaman, R., & Saleem, I. (2017). Boardroom gender diversity and corporate sustainability practices: Evidence from Australian securities exchange listed firms. Journal of Cleaner Production, 149, 874–885, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.141.
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; Nerantzidis et al., 2022Nerantzidis, M., Tzeremes, P., Koutoupis, A., & Pourgias, A. (2022). Exploring the black box: Board gender diversity and corporate social performance. Finance Research Letters, 48, 102987, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102987.
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; Wasiuzzaman & Wan Mohammad, 2020Wasiuzzaman, S., & Wan Mohammad, W. M. (2020). Board gender diversity and transparency of environmental, social and governance disclosure: Evidence from Malaysia. Managerial and Decision Economics, 41(1), 145–156, doi: 10.1002/mde.3099.
https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.3099...
) on sustainability disclosure. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies address the relationship between CSR committees and objetivos de desenvolvimento sustentável (ODS) disclosure and the moderation of gender diversity in this relationship.

Based on the discussion above, the objectives of this paper are to explore the effect of the presence of CSR committees on SDGs disclosure and examine the moderating effect of gender diversity on this relationship. For this purpose, the study uses stakeholder theory because it forms a theoretical basis for analyzing a firm's strategic stance toward responsibility activities and the power of stakeholders in corporate social disclosure (Roberts, 1992Roberts, R. W. (1992). Determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure: An application of stakeholder theory. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 17(6), 595–612, doi: 10.1016/0361-3682(92)90015-K.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-3682(92)900...
). The stakeholder theory is a set of propositions that states that firms have obligations to their stakeholders (Freeman, 2015Freeman, R.E. (2015). Stakeholder theory. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, doi: 10.1002/9781118785317.weom020179.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118785317.we...
). This theory suggests that if companies want to be effective, they must pay attention to the relationships that can affect or be affected by their activities (Freeman, 1999Freeman, R. E. (1999). Divergent stakeholder theory. Academy of Management Review, 24(2), 233–236, doi: 10.5465/amr.1999.1893932.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1999.1893932...
). It is worth noting that the stakeholder theory emerged by observing the business world and the overall value creation process (Freeman, Phillips, & Sisodia, 2020Freeman, R. E., Phillips, R., & Sisodia, R. (2020). Tensions in stakeholder theory. Business & Society, 59(2), 213–231, doi: 10.1177/0007650318773750.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650318773750...
). Thus, according to the stakeholder theory, stakeholders influence corporate social disclosure (van der Laan Smith, Adhikari, Tondkar, & Andrews, 2010van der Laan Smith, J., Adhikari, A., Tondkar, R. H., & Andrews, R. L. (2010). The impact of corporate social disclosure on investment behavior: A cross-national study. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 29(2), 177–192, doi: 10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2009.10.009.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.200...
).

The study has several contributions. First, the United Nations (UN) has called for sustainable development in vulnerable regions of the world, such as Latin America, a region characterized by social disparities and structural problems (Tabares, 2021Tabares, S. (2021). Do hybrid organizations contribute to sustainable development goals? Evidence from B corps in Colombia. Journal of Cleaner Production, 280, 124615, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124615.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.1...
). In 2016, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) created the Forum of Latin American and Caribbean Countries on Sustainable Development. In this context, ECLAC seeks to achieve the SDGs by recognizing the diversity of challenges in each Latin American country without imposing a single set of measures (Lee et al., 2016Lee, B. X., Kjaerulf, F., Turner, S., Cohen, L., Donnelly, P. D., Muggah, R., … MacGregor, L. S. (2016). Transforming our world: Implementing the 2030 agenda through sustainable development goal indicators. Journal of Public Health Policy, 37(S1), 13–31, doi: 10.1057/s41271-016-0002-7.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-016-0002-...
). For example, in its first voluntary report released in 2017, Brazil highlighted that the fiscal crisis had compromised the economy's growth and the state's capacity to carry out public policies in sustainability. In this sense, to implement the SDGs and make the 2030 Agenda a reality, the Brazilian Government intends to adopt a participatory model with various social segments (Brazil, 2017). Thus, the study expands the knowledge of SDGs disclosure in Latin America.

Second, the Latin American region has a strong presence of family firms, principal–principal conflict and weak minority shareholder protection. In addition, there are institutional voids in Latin America. These voids occur when market-supporting institutions are absent or inefficient (Khanna & Palepu, 1997Khanna, T., & Palepu, K. (1997). Why focused strategies. Harvard Business Review, 75(4), 41–51., 2010Khanna, T., & Palepu, K. G. (2010). Winning in emerging markets: A road map for strategy and execution. Harvard Business Press.). Thus, studying corporate governance mechanisms such as CSR committees in Latin America is necessary. Third, the study is relevant from the point of view of the stakeholder theory, which expects higher transparency from the firm to strengthen dialogue with stakeholders. Finally, the study extends the literature by quantitatively examining the relationship between SDGs, the CSR committee and gender diversity.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. The second section discusses the theory and literature review. Next, we discuss our research design and methodology, and the fourth section presents the empirical analyses of the study. Finally, we discuss the findings and make concluding remarks; we point out the research limitations and delineate the related future research directions.

2. Theoretical background and research hypothesis

2.1 Stakeholder theory

Stakeholders refer to “any group or individual that can affect or is affected by an organization” (Freeman, 1984Freeman, R. E. (1984). Stakeholder management: Framework and philosophy, Mansfield, MA: Pitman.). The term “stakeholder,” as we use it now, first appeared in 1963 in an internal memorandum from the Stanford Research Institute (Parmar et al., 2010Parmar, B. L., Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J. S., Wicks, A. C., Purnell, L., & de Colle, S. (2010). Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. Academy of Management Annals, 4(1), 403–445, doi: 10.5465/19416520.2010.495581.
https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2010.49...
). This term challenged the idea that the only group to whom the firm should respond was the shareholders. Moreover, the word “stakeholders” is powerful because it has conceptual breadth, which can generate praise or scorn from many scholars (Phillips, Freeman, & Wicks, 2003Phillips, R., Freeman, R. E., & Wicks, A. C. (2003). What stakeholder theory is not. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13(4), 479–502, doi: 10.5840/beq200313434.
https://doi.org/10.5840/beq200313434...
). It is worth noting that managers' primary duty is to create value for the stakeholders (Hörisch, Schaltegger, & Freeman, 2020Hörisch, J., Schaltegger, S., & Freeman, R. E. (2020). Integrating stakeholder theory and sustainability accounting: A conceptual synthesis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 275, 124097, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124097.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.1...
). In this line, the stakeholder theory states that firms must create a good relationship with stakeholders and treat them best (Wicaksono & Setiawan, 2022Wicaksono, A. P., & Setiawan, D. (2022). Water disclosure in the agriculture industry: Does stakeholder influence matter? Journal of Cleaner Production, 337, 130605, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130605.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.1...
). Therefore, according to the stakeholder theory, a firm must meet the expectations of its different stakeholders, which in modern finance is often referred to as sustainable performance (Khan, 2022Khan, M. A. (2022). ESG disclosure and firm performance: A bibliometric and meta analysis. Research in International Business and Finance, 61, 101668, doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101668.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101...
; Wicaksono & Setiawan, 2022Wicaksono, A. P., & Setiawan, D. (2022). Water disclosure in the agriculture industry: Does stakeholder influence matter? Journal of Cleaner Production, 337, 130605, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130605.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.1...
).

The stakeholder theory suggests that firms must balance the interests of the various stakeholders (Radu & Smaili, 2021Radu, C., & Smaili, N. (2021). Alignment Versus Monitoring: An Examination of the Effect of the CSR Committee and CSR-Linked Executive Compensation on CSR Performance. Journal of Business Ethics, pp. 1-19, doi: 10.1007/s10551-021-04904-2.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04904...
). Any violation of this balance can destabilize the entire system (Freeman et al., 2020Freeman, R. E., Phillips, R., & Sisodia, R. (2020). Tensions in stakeholder theory. Business & Society, 59(2), 213–231, doi: 10.1177/0007650318773750.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650318773750...
). According to the stakeholder theory, the firm's main objective is to maximize its total market value long-term (Jensen, 2010Jensen, M. C. (2010). Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 22(1), 32–42, doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6622.2010.00259.x.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6622.2010...
). In this line, profits are crucial to the firm's activity. However, they result from the value creation process (Theodoulidis, Diaz, Crotto, & Rancati, 2017Theodoulidis, B., Diaz, D., Crotto, F., & Rancati, E. (2017). Exploring corporate social responsibility and financial performance through stakeholder theory in the tourism industries. Tourism Management, 62, 173–188, doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.03.018.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2017.0...
). In this process, stakeholders are both receivers and creators of value (Freudenreich, Lüdeke-Freund, & Schaltegger, 2020Freudenreich, B., Lüdeke-Freund, F., & Schaltegger, S. (2020). A stakeholder theory perspective on business models: Value creation for sustainability. Journal of Business Ethics, 166(1), 3–18, doi: 10.1007/s10551-019-04112-z.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04112...
). Thus, firms can have broader obligations than the traditional economic theory supposes (Freeman, 2015Freeman, R.E. (2015). Stakeholder theory. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, doi: 10.1002/9781118785317.weom020179.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118785317.we...
).

2.2 CSR committee and Sustainable Development Goals disclosure

Board committees, such as the CSR committee, support the boards in performing their functions (Pucheta-Martínez, Gallego-Álvarez, & Bel-Oms, 2021Pucheta-Martínez, M. C., Gallego-Álvarez, I., & Bel-Oms, I. (2021). Corporate social and environmental disclosure as a sustainable development tool provided by board sub-committees: Do women directors play a relevant moderating role? Business Strategy and the Environment, 30(8), 3485-3501, doi: 10.1002/bse.2815.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2815...
). The establishment of the CSR committee is a voluntary decision (Endrikat, de Villiers, Guenther, & Guenther, 2020Endrikat, J., de Villiers, C., Guenther, T. W., & Guenther, E. M. (2020). Board characteristics and corporate social responsibility: A meta-analytic investigation. Business & Society, 0007650320930638, 60(8), doi: 10.1177/0007650320930638.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650320930638...
), i. e. there is no legal obligation to create a CSR committee (García-Sánchez, Gomez-Miranda, David, & Rodríguez-Ariza, 2019García-Sánchez, I. M., Gomez-Miranda, M.-E., David, F., & Rodríguez-Ariza, L. (2019). The explanatory effect of CSR committee and assurance services on the adoption of the IFC performance standards, as a means of enhancing corporate transparency. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, 10(5), doi: 10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2018-0261.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2018-02...
). However, the creation of the CSR committee can be viewed as a firm's signaling of social issues that place CSR on the agenda of the firm's executives (Torres & Augusto, 2021Torres, P., & Augusto, M. (2021). Attention to social issues and CEO duality as enablers of resilience to exogenous shocks in the tourism industry. Tourism Management, 87, 104400, doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2021.104400.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2021.1...
). Indeed, the presence of a CSR committee encourages sustainability (Fuente et al., 2017Fuente, J. A., García-Sánchez, I. M., & Lozano, M. B. (2017). The role of the board of directors in the adoption of GRI guidelines for the disclosure of CSR information. Journal of Cleaner Production, 141, 737–750, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.09.155.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.0...
). Accordingly, the CSR committee deals mainly with sustainability, ethics, health, safety and environmental issues (Konadu, 2017Konadu, R. (2017). Gender diversity impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. Economics and Business Review, 3(1), doi: 10.18559/ebr.2017.1.7.
https://doi.org/10.18559/ebr.2017.1.7...
). Therefore, the presence of a CSR committee guides managers in effectively managing CSR issues (Derchi, Zoni, & Dossi, 2020Derchi, G.-B., Zoni, L., & Dossi, A. (2020). Corporate social responsibility performance, incentives, and learning effects. Journal of Business Ethics, 173(3), 617-641, doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04556-8.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04556...
).

Firms form a committee focused on sustainability issues to effectively manage their relationship with stakeholders (Kılıç, Uyar, Kuzey, & Karaman, 2021Kılıç, M., Uyar, A., Kuzey, C., & Karaman, A. S. (2021). Drivers and consequences of sustainability committee existence? Evidence from the hospitality and tourism industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 92, 102753, doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102753.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.1027...
). According to stakeholder theory, CSR committees tend to be sensitive to stakeholder demands (Eberhardt-Toth, 2017Eberhardt-Toth, E. (2017). Who should be on a board corporate social responsibility committee? Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 1926–1935, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.08.127.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.0...
; Radu & Smaili, 2021Radu, C., & Smaili, N. (2021). Alignment Versus Monitoring: An Examination of the Effect of the CSR Committee and CSR-Linked Executive Compensation on CSR Performance. Journal of Business Ethics, pp. 1-19, doi: 10.1007/s10551-021-04904-2.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04904...
). Because it improves interaction with stakeholders (Jian et al., 2017Jian, W. Z., Jaaffar, A. H., Ooi, S. K., & Amran, A. (2017). The effects of national culture, corporate governance and CSR governance on CSR disclosure quality. Global Business and Management Research, 9(4s), 298–314.), CSR committees can promote companies' connections with external stakeholders (Uyar, Kuzey, Kilic, & Karaman, 2021aUyar, A., Kuzey, C., Kilic, M., & Karaman, A. S. (2021a). Board structure, financial performance, corporate social responsibility performance, CSR committee, and CEO duality: Disentangling the connection in healthcare. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(6), doi: 10.1002/csr.2141.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2141...
). Further, the existence of a CSR committee enables companies to gain the trust of local stakeholders (Helfaya & Moussa, 2017Helfaya, A., & Moussa, T. (2017). Do board's corporate social responsibility strategy and orientation influence environmental sustainability disclosure? UK evidence. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(8), 1061–1077, doi: 10.1002/bse.1960.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1960...
). Through the CSR committee, companies can implement sustainable projects with the involvement of the firm's stakeholders, ensuring the quality of the report in the disclosure process to stakeholders (Cucari et al., 2018Cucari, N., de Falco, S. E., & Orlando, B. (2018). Diversity of board of directors and environmental social governance: evidence from Italian listed companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(3), 250-266, doi: 10.1002/csr.1452.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1452...
). Thus, companies with a CSR committee are more likely to meet their stakeholders' needs and carry out more responsible practices (Bhuiyan, Huang, & de Villiers, 2021Bhuiyan, M. B. U., Huang, H. J., & de Villiers, C. (2021). Determinants of environmental investment: Evidence from Europe. Journal of Cleaner Production, 292, 125990, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.125990.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
; Uyar, Kuzey, Kilic, & Karaman, 2021bUyar, A., Kuzey, C., Kilic, M., & Karaman, A. S. (2021b). Does firms' CSR engagement support tourism sector development? Moderation effect of CSR committee and CEO duality. Tourism Economics, 13548166211024502, doi: 10.1177/13548166211024502.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816621102450...
).

Using a sample of 386 Indian companies from 2007 to 2016, Fahad and Rahman (2020)Fahad, P., & Rahman, P. M. (2020). Impact of corporate governance on CSR disclosure. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 17(2-3), 155–167, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00082-1.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-020-00082...
found that the CSR committee positively impacts CSR disclosure. Based on an empirical analysis of a sample of 281 companies from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the financial year 2012, Miras-Rodríguez et al. (2019)Miras-Rodríguez, M. D., Martínez-Martínez, D., & Escobar-Pérez, B. (2019). Which corporate governance mechanisms drive CSR disclosure practices in emerging countries?. Sustainability, 11(1), doi: 10.3390/su11010061.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010061...
suggested that the CSR committee has a positive effect on CSR disclosure. Similarly, Adel et al. (2019)Adel, C., Hussain, M. M., Mohamed, E. K. A., & Basuony, M. A. K. (2019). Is corporate governance relevant to the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure in large European companies? International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, 27(2), 301–332, doi: 10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-0118.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-01...
concluded that a CSR committee positively impacts all facets of CSR disclosure of 336 European companies. Based on 203 companies from Malaysia, India and the UK, Adnan et al. (2018)Adnan, S. M., Hay, D., & van Staden, C. J. (2018). The influence of culture and corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure: A cross country analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 198, 820–832, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.0...
found that the CSR committee positively influences the quality and quantity of CSR reports. Using a sample of 139 companies listed in Forbes Global 2000, Jian et al. (2017)Jian, W. Z., Jaaffar, A. H., Ooi, S. K., & Amran, A. (2017). The effects of national culture, corporate governance and CSR governance on CSR disclosure quality. Global Business and Management Research, 9(4s), 298–314. suggest that the CSR committee positively influences the CSR disclosure quality.

From the viewpoint of the stakeholder theory, Handayati et al. (2022)Handayati, P., Tham, Y. H., Yuningsih, Y., Rochayatun., & Meldona, S.. (2022). Audit quality, corporate governance, firm characteristics and CSR disclosures – Evidence from Indonesia. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 33(3), doi: 10.1002/jcaf.22548.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22548...
investigated the impact of corporate governance on social disclosure. The authors concluded that CSR positively impacts social disclosure. Using a sample of 54 Italian companies from 2011 to 2014, Cucari et al. (2018)Cucari, N., de Falco, S. E., & Orlando, B. (2018). Diversity of board of directors and environmental social governance: evidence from Italian listed companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(3), 250-266, doi: 10.1002/csr.1452.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1452...
suggest that the CSR committee positively affects CSR disclosure. Helfaya and Moussa (2017)Helfaya, A., & Moussa, T. (2017). Do board's corporate social responsibility strategy and orientation influence environmental sustainability disclosure? UK evidence. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(8), 1061–1077, doi: 10.1002/bse.1960.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1960...
examined whether the CSR committee plays a substantial role in sustainability disclosure in 94 UK companies, and the results revealed that the CSR committee positively influences sustainability disclosure. However, using a sample of 127 US companies from 2000 to 2005, Rupley et al. (2012)Rupley, K. H., Brown, D., & Marshall, R. S. (2012). Governance, media and the quality of environmental disclosure. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 31(6), 610–640, doi: 10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2012.09.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.201...
found that the CSR committee does not influence the quality of voluntary environmental disclosure. Therefore, based on the stakeholder theory, the following hypothesis is proposed:H1.

The presence of a CSR committee is positively associated with SDGs disclosure.

2.3 Moderation effect of gender diversity on the relationship between CSR committees and Sustainable Development Goals disclosure

Women and men differ in their values regarding sustainability (Liao et al., 2015Liao, L., Luo, L., & Tang, Q. (2015). Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure. The British Accounting Review, 47(4), 409–424, doi: 10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.00...
; Post, Rahman, & Rubow, 2011Post, C., Rahman, N., & Rubow, E. (2011). Green governance: Boards of directors' composition and environmental corporate social responsibility. Business & Society, 50(1), 189–223, doi: 10.1177/0007650310394642.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650310394642...
). For example, gender diversity promotes the formation of renewable energy alliances (Post & Byron, 2014Post, C., & Byron, K. (2014). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1546–1571, doi: 10.5465/amj.2013.0319.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0319...
). Women also have more community characteristics than men (Disli et al., 2022Disli, M., Yilmaz, M. K., & Mohamed, F. F. M. (2022). Board characteristics and sustainability performance: empirical evidence from emerging markets. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, 13(4), 929-952, doi: 10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-0313.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-03...
), which leads to a different orientation toward stakeholders (Galbreath, 2018Galbreath, J. (2018). Is board gender diversity linked to financial performance? The mediating mechanism of CSR. Business & Society, 57(5), 863–889, doi: 10.1177/0007650316647967.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650316647967...
). In addition, the presence of female board members can encourage more communication between board members (Bear & Post, 2010Bear, S., & Post, C. (2010). The impact of board diversity and gender composition on corporate social responsibility and firm reputation. Journal of Business Ethics, 97(2), 207–221, doi: 10.1007/s10551-010-0505-2.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0505-...
).

Women directors may participate more in decision-making (Bear & Post, 2010Bear, S., & Post, C. (2010). The impact of board diversity and gender composition on corporate social responsibility and firm reputation. Journal of Business Ethics, 97(2), 207–221, doi: 10.1007/s10551-010-0505-2.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0505-...
). They also bring new ideas and perspectives to the board, meaning they are not mere tokens (Adams & Ferreira, 2009Adams, R. B., & Ferreira, D. (2009). Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance. Journal of Financial Economics, 94(2), 291–309, doi: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2008.10.007.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2008.1...
; Post & Byron, 2014Post, C., & Byron, K. (2014). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1546–1571, doi: 10.5465/amj.2013.0319.
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0319...
). Because most women directors do not come from traditional business executive careers, they bring valuable resources from other areas such as marketing, public relations and legal experience (Hillman, Cannella, & Harris, 2002Hillman, A. J., Cannella, A. A., & Harris, I. C. (2002). Women and racial minorities in the boardroom: How do directors differ? Journal of Management, 28(6), 747–763, doi: 10.1016/S0149-2063(02)00192-7.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0149-2063(02)00...
). However, increasing gender diversity can be costly for some companies and decrease shareholder value (Adams & Ferreira, 2004). It is worth noting that firms committed to gender diversity are penalized more by the market when they underperform on sustainability (Li, de Villiers, Li, & Li, 2022Li, Y., de Villiers, C., Li, L. Z., & Li, L. (2022). The moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relation between corporate social responsibility and firm value. Journal of Management Control, 33(1), doi: 10.1007/s00187-022-00334-x.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-022-00334...
).

Given that gender diversity aligns the firm's interests with its stakeholders, this diversity is crucial to good corporate governance (Nicolò, Zampone, Sannino, & De Iorio, 2022Nicolò, G., Zampone, G., Sannino, G., & De Iorio, S. (2022). Sustainable corporate governance and non-financial disclosure in Europe: Does the gender diversity matter? Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 23(1), 227–249, doi: 10.1108/JAAR-04-2021-0100.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JAAR-04-2021-010...
). According to stakeholder theory, a board with gender diversity is more likely to represent stakeholders (Pareek, Sahu, & Gupta, 2021Pareek, R., Sahu, T. N., & Gupta, A. (2021). Gender diversity and corporate sustainability performance: empirical evidence from India. Vilakshan-XIMB Journal of Management, doi: 10.1108/XJM-10-2020-0183.
https://doi.org/10.1108/XJM-10-2020-0183...
). In this line, women directors are more responsive to stakeholder needs than men (Nerantzidis et al., 2022Nerantzidis, M., Tzeremes, P., Koutoupis, A., & Pourgias, A. (2022). Exploring the black box: Board gender diversity and corporate social performance. Finance Research Letters, 48, 102987, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102987.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2022.10298...
). Furthermore, according to Velte (2016)Velte, P. (2016). Women on management board and ESG performance. Journal of Global Responsibility, 7(1), 98–109, doi: 10.1108/JGR-01-2016-0001.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JGR-01-2016-0001...
, gender diversity increases the company's reputation with stakeholders. Therefore, gender diversity allows companies' interests to be aligned with stakeholders' interests (Liu, Lei, & Buttner, 2020Liu, Y., Lei, L., & Buttner, E. H. (2020). Establishing the boundary conditions for female board directors' influence on firm performance through CSR. Journal of Business Research, 121, 112–120, doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.08.026.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.0...
).

Using a sample of 426 multinationals for 2016–2019, Kiefner et al. (2022)Kiefner, V., Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. (2022). Female executives and multinationals' support of the UN's sustainable development goals. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101304, doi: 10.1016/j.jwb.2021.101304.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2021.10130...
concluded that executives increase multinationals' support for the SDGs. Nadeem et al. (2017)Nadeem, M., Zaman, R., & Saleem, I. (2017). Boardroom gender diversity and corporate sustainability practices: Evidence from Australian securities exchange listed firms. Journal of Cleaner Production, 149, 874–885, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.141.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.0...
investigated whether gender diversity influences sustainability disclosure from 374 Australian companies. The results revealed that gender diversity positively influences sustainability disclosure. Nerantzidis et al. (2022)Nerantzidis, M., Tzeremes, P., Koutoupis, A., & Pourgias, A. (2022). Exploring the black box: Board gender diversity and corporate social performance. Finance Research Letters, 48, 102987, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102987.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2022.10298...
also suggest, in a sample of 81 European companies from 2011 to 2016, that gender diversity positively impacts corporate social performance. Using a sample of 541 firm-year observations from Canadian companies, Ben-Amar et al. (2017)Ben-Amar, W., Chang, M., & McIlkenny, P. (2017). Board gender diversity and corporate response to sustainability initiatives: Evidence from the carbon disclosure project. Journal of Business Ethics, 142(2), 369–383, doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2759-1.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2759-...
found that gender diversity positively influences the disclosure of climate change strategies. Similarly, Liao et al. (2015)Liao, L., Luo, L., & Tang, Q. (2015). Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure. The British Accounting Review, 47(4), 409–424, doi: 10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.00...
indicated that gender diversity positively influences greenhouse gas disclosure based on 329 UK companies.

Cicchiello et al. (2021)Cicchiello, A. F., Fellegara, A. M., Kazemikhasragh, A., & Monferrà, S. (2021). Gender diversity on corporate boards: How Asian and African women contribute on sustainability reporting activity. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 36(7), doi: 10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147.
https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147...
examined the association between board gender diversity and SDGs adoption in 366 Asian and African companies. The results indicated that gender diversity is positively associated with sustainability reporting. Based on an international sample of 1,588 firms from 2009 to 2017, García-Sánchez et al. (2022)García-Sánchez, I.-M., Hussain, N., Khan, S.-A., & Martínez-Ferrero, J. (2022). Assurance of corporate social responsibility reports: Examining the role of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 29(1), 89–106, doi: 10.1002/csr.2186.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2186...
suggest that gender diversity encourages firms to ensure their CSR reporting. Using a sample of Spanish nonfinancial firms from 2009 to 2013, Cabeza-García, Fernández-Gago, and Nieto (2018)Cabeza-García, L., Fernández-Gago, R., & Nieto, M. (2018). Do board gender diversity and director typology impact CSR reporting? European Management Review, 15(4), 559–575, doi: 10.1111/emre.12143.
https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12143...
found that gender diversity implies better CSR disclosure. Similarly, Gurol and Lagasio (2022)Gurol, B., & Lagasio, V. (2022). Women board members’ impact on ESG disclosure with environment and social dimensions: evidence from the European banking sector. Social Responsibility Journal, doi: 10.1108/SRJ-08-2020-0308.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-08-2020-0308...
conclude that gender diversity positively influences ESG disclosure based on a sample of 35 European banks listed on the EURO STOXX 600. Using an international sample of 39 nonfinancial companies from 2010 to 2019, Disli et al. (2022)Disli, M., Yilmaz, M. K., & Mohamed, F. F. M. (2022). Board characteristics and sustainability performance: empirical evidence from emerging markets. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, 13(4), 929-952, doi: 10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-0313.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-09-2020-03...
determined that gender diversity positively influences sustainability performance. In addition, based on a sample of 78 Malaysian companies, Wasiuzzaman and Wan Mohammad (2020)Wasiuzzaman, S., & Wan Mohammad, W. M. (2020). Board gender diversity and transparency of environmental, social and governance disclosure: Evidence from Malaysia. Managerial and Decision Economics, 41(1), 145–156, doi: 10.1002/mde.3099.
https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.3099...
found that gender diversity increases ESG disclosure.

Based on the stakeholder theory, we believe that gender diversity can impact the disclosure of SDGs through the CSR committee to meet the needs of the company's stakeholders. In this respect, gender diversity can intervene to moderate the relationship between the existence of a CSR committee and SDGs disclosure. This reasoning leads to the following hypothesis:H2.

Gender diversity positively moderates the relationship between a CSR committee and SDGs disclosure.

3. Research design and methodology

3.1 Sample and data collection

To test the hypotheses, we used a sample of 897 firm-year observations of 238 firms from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru from 2018 to 2020. The choice of the period is because of the recent ratification of the SDGs (they were ratified in 2015), and Latin American firms began to disclose the SDGs in 2018. In addition, these countries were selected because they belong to the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Markets Latin America Index, which has 101 constituents and covers approximately 85% of each country's free float-adjusted market capitalization (MSCI, 2021MSCI. (2021). MSCI emerging markets Latin America index (USD). Retrieved from www.msci.com/documents/10199/5b537e9c-ab98-49e4-88b5-bf0aed926b9b
www.msci.com/documents/10199/5b537e9c-ab...
). Our data set is made up of information from the Refinitiv database. The Refinitiv database comprises about 150 indicators grouped into ten dimensions that aim to measure a company's environmental, social and governance performance and provide sector-specific rankings (Bătae, Dragomir, & Feleagă, 2021Bătae, O. M., Dragomir, V. D., & Feleagă, L. (2021). The relationship between environmental, social, and financial performance in the banking sector: A European study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 290, 125791, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.125791.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
). In addition, this base contains more than 450 different ESG metrics (Refinitiv, 2022Refinitiv. (2022). An overview of environmental, social and corporate Governance – ESG. Retrieved from www.refinitiv.com/en/financial-data/company-data/esg-data
www.refinitiv.com/en/financial-data/comp...
). Table 1 illustrates the sector classification used in this analysis, based on the Global Industry Classification Standard.

Table 1.
Sample distribution by sector of activity and countries

As is evident from the data in Table 1, the sample comprised 11 activity sectors. Firms belonging to the consumer staples represent financials in 151 (16.8%) observations, followed by the consumer staples, materials and industrials sectors at 130 (14.49%), 127 (14.15%) and 124 observations (13.82%), respectively. On the other hand, the sector with the lowest representation was communication services, with 33 observations (3.67%). Concerning countries, Brazil has the most observations, with 329 (36.67%), followed by Argentina and Mexico with 151 (16.83%) and 150 (16.7%) observations, respectively.

3.2 Variable definitions

3.2.1 Dependent variable.

The Refinitiv database provides binary variables that indicate whether a firm aligns its practices with each of the 17 SDGs (Kiefner et al., 2022Kiefner, V., Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. (2022). Female executives and multinationals' support of the UN's sustainable development goals. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101304, doi: 10.1016/j.jwb.2021.101304.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2021.10130...
). Sustainability disclosure is one of the main elements of good corporate governance (Velte, 2016Velte, P. (2016). Women on management board and ESG performance. Journal of Global Responsibility, 7(1), 98–109, doi: 10.1108/JGR-01-2016-0001.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JGR-01-2016-0001...
). SDGs disclosure is presented in this study as the dependent variable. This variable is calculated as the ratio between the 17 SDGs aggregate and the total number of SDGs (17). If the company discloses information on an SDG, it will assume the value of 1; otherwise, it is 0. Therefore, to code our dependent variable, we count the number of SDGs disclosed by year and company and then divide by the total number of SDGs (17) (Kiefner et al., 2022Kiefner, V., Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. (2022). Female executives and multinationals' support of the UN's sustainable development goals. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101304, doi: 10.1016/j.jwb.2021.101304.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2021.10130...
). The 17 SDGs are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.
List of the Sustainable Development Goals

3.2.2 Independent, moderating and control variables.

The CSR committee is our independent variable. It is a dummy variable that equals 1 if the firm has a CSR committee; otherwise, 0 (Fahad & Rahman, 2020Fahad, P., & Rahman, P. M. (2020). Impact of corporate governance on CSR disclosure. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 17(2-3), 155–167, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00082-1.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-020-00082...
; Khan, 2022Khan, M. A. (2022). ESG disclosure and firm performance: A bibliometric and meta analysis. Research in International Business and Finance, 61, 101668, doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101668.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101...
; Saeed et al., 2022Saeed, A., Riaz, H., Liedong, T. A., & Rajwani, T. (2022). The impact of TMT gender diversity on corporate environmental strategy in emerging economies. Journal of Business Research, 141, 536–551, doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.11.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.1...
). The moderating variable is gender diversity. For measuring gender diversity, we use the Blau index. The maximum value of the Blau index indicates that members from both gender categories have the same proportion (Maji & Saha, 2021Maji, S. G., & Saha, R. (2021). Gender diversity and financial performance in an emerging economy: Empirical evidencefrom India. Management Research Review, 44(12), 1660–1683, doi: 10.1108/MRR-08-2020-0525.
https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-08-2020-0525...
). To compute the Blau index, we used the following equation:

(1)1-i-1nPi2
where Pi is the proportion of boardroom members in each category in the group, n is the number of different categories and ∑ is the sum of the calculations from category 1 to category n. Blau index values range from 0 to 5, when the board of directors has equal numbers of men and women (Velte, 2018Velte, P. (2018). Does gender diversity in the audit committee influence key audit matters' readability in the audit report? UK evidence. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(5), 748–755, doi: 10.1002/csr.1491.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1491...
). The Blau index is more appropriate for measuring diversity than the percentage of women on the board because the Blau index exhibits maximum value when diversity is maximum. In contrast, the proportion of women on the board indicates maximum value when the board has a high female presence, thus resulting in high homogeneity (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008Campbell, K., & Mínguez-Vera, A. (2008). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(3), 435–451, doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9630-y.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9630-...
). See the variables description in Table 3.

Table 3.
Variables description

Control variables regarding SDGs disclosure were introduced to the regression model to decrease the likelihood of bias in the results. We include control variables at the board and company level that can affect the disclosure of SDGs. We included board size, CEO duality and analyst coverage at the board level. Board size is the total number of board members, and larger boards of directors have different points of view, being more efficient in environmental and social disclosure (Campanella, Serino, Crisci, & D’Ambra, 2021Campanella, F., Serino, L., Crisci, A., & D’Ambra, A. (2021). The role of corporate governance in environmental policy disclosure and sustainable development. Generalized estimating equations in longitudinal count data analysis. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(1), 474–484, doi: 10.1002/csr.2062.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2062...
). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between board size and SDGs disclosure. CEO duality is a dummy variable that equals 0 if the company operates simultaneously with the same person as CEO and chairman and otherwise 0. CEO-chairman duality decreases the monitoring of the board of directors (Tibiletti, Marchini, Furlotti, & Medioli, 2021Tibiletti, V., Marchini, P. L., Furlotti, K., & Medioli, A. (2021). Does corporate governance matter in corporate social responsibility disclosure? Evidence from Italy in the era of sustainability. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(2), 1–12, doi: 10.1002/csr.2097. November
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2097...
). Thus, we expect a negative relationship between CEO duality and SDGs disclosure. The analyst coverage variable is measured by the total number of analysts covering a company in a given year (Farooq, Satt, & Bendriouch, 2021Farooq, O., Satt, H., & Bendriouch, F. (2021). Effect of advertising expenditures on analyst coverage: evidence from an emerging market. International Journal of Emerging Markets, doi: 10.1108/IJOEM-11-2020-1372.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-11-2020-13...
). Firms with higher analyst coverage are more likely to be positively evaluated by stakeholders when they achieve good sustainability performance (Chun & Shin, 2018Chun, H. M., & Shin, S. Y. (2018). Does analyst coverage enhance firms' corporate social performance? Evidence from Korea. Sustainability, 10(7), doi: 10.3390/su10072561.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072561...
). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between board size and SDGs disclosure.

We included cash dividend, profitability, leverage and firm size at the firm level. Cash dividends are measured by the natural logarithm of cash dividends (Trihermanto & Nainggolan, 2019Trihermanto, F., & Nainggolan, A. Y. (2019). Corporate life cycle, CSR, and dividend policy: Empirical evidence of Indonesian listed firms. Social Responsibility Journal, 16(2), 159–178, doi: 10.1108/SRJ-09-2017-0186.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-09-2017-0186...
). Firms that pay dividends can signal that they sustainably create wealth, aligning their interests with their stakeholders' (Sheikh, Bhutta, Rehman, Bazil, & Hassan, 2021Sheikh, M. F., Bhutta, A. I., Rehman, B., Bazil, M., & Hassan, A. (2021). Corporate social responsibility and dividend policy: a strategic choice in family firms. Journal of Family Business Management, 12(2), 296-315, doi: 10.1108/JFBM-10-2020-0096.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-10-2020-009...
). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between the cash dividend and the disclosure of SDGs. Profitability is the ratio between income after taxes for the fiscal period and total assets, and more profitable firms tend to have higher sustainability disclosure to legitimize their existence (Hermawan & Gunardi, 2019Hermawan, A., & Gunardi, A. (2019). Motivation for disclosure of corporate social responsibility: Evidence from banking industry in Indonesia. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(3), 1297–1306, doi: 10.9770/jesi.2019.6.3(17).
https://doi.org/10.9770/jesi.2019.6.3(17...
). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between profitability and SDGs disclosure. Leverage is measured as debt over total assets, and more leveraged companies tend to disclose more sustainable information to project positive information (Talha, Christopher, & Karthikeyani, 2016Talha, M., Christopher, B, & Karthikeyani, J. (2016). Determinants of corporate social reporting in India. Business challenges in the changing economic landscape, (Vol. 1, pp. 71–88). Springer.). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between leverage and SDGs disclosure. Finally, firm size is the natural logarithm of total assets. Firms with more employees tend to disclose more environmental and social information (Ting, 2021Ting, P.-H. (2021). Do large firms just talk corporate social responsibility? The evidence from CSR report disclosure. Finance Research Letters, 38, 101476, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101476.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.10147...
). Thus, we expect a positive relationship between firm size and SDGs disclosure.

3.3 Empirical models

We use a panel data econometric model, with the data organized in year-firm observation units. Breusch–Pagan Lagrange multiplier test was performed to check for heteroscedasticity. The result indicated heteroscedasticity (p < 0.01). The Wooldridge test was performed to check for first-order autocorrelation in the panel data. The result suggests first-order autocorrelation in the panel data (p < 0.01). Thus, to deal with the problems of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation, we used feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) with the heteroscedasticity and panel-specific AR1 autocorrelation. FGLS is a method to deal with autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity (Reed & Ye, 2011Reed, W. R., & Ye, H. (2011). Which panel data estimator should I use? Applied Economics, 43(8), 985–1000, doi: 10.1080/00036840802600087.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0003684080260008...
). FGLS is more reliable than ordinary least squares for dealing with autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity (Rao & Griliches, 1969Rao, P., & Griliches, Z. (1969). Small-sample properties of several two-stage regression methods in the context of auto-correlated errors. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 64(325), 253–272, doi: 10.1080/01621459.1969.10500968.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1969.10...
). Because FGLS is simply the ordinary least squares method applied to regression that eliminates autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity from the model (Symeou, Zyglidopoulos, & Gardberg, 2019Symeou, P. C., Zyglidopoulos, S., & Gardberg, N. A. (2019). Corporate environmental performance: Revisiting the role of organizational slack. Journal of Business Research, 96, 169–182, doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.11.019.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.1...
), all variables were subjected to the winsorization process by winsorizing the lower and upper 1% tails, replacing the extreme values with winsorized or trimmed values at both ends. Thus, to verify the influence of gender diversity on the SDGs disclosure and the moderating role of the CSR committee in this relationship, the models are estimated:

(2)SDGi,t= β0+β1CSRCOMi,t+β2GENDi,t+β3BSIZEi,t+β4CEODUALi,t+β5ANCOVi,t+ β6CASHi,t+β7ROAi,tβ8LEVi,t+β9FSIZEi,t+εi,t
(3)SDGi,t= β0+β1CSRCOMi,t+β2GENDi,t+β3CSRCOMi,t * GENDi,t+β4BSIZEi,t+ β5CEODUALi,t+ β6ANCOVi,t+β7CASHi,t+β8ROAi,tβ9LEVi,t+ β10FSIZEi,t+εi,t
where SDG is the SDGs disclosure, CSR is the CSR committee, GEND is the gender diversity, BSIZE is the board size, CEODUAL is the duality between CEO and chairman, ANCOV is the analyst coverage, CASH is the cash dividends, ROA is the profitability, LEV is the leverage and FSIZE is the firm size. All continuous variables are winsorized at the 1st and 99th percentiles. Furthermore, β0 is the intercept and β1βn are the regression coefficients, and εit is the remainder error term.

4. Results

4.1 Descriptive statics

Table 4 summarizes the descriptive statistics for all variables considered in the study model. The average SDGs disclosure score is 0.248, with a standard deviation of 0.333 and a maximum score of 1. The results indicate that few companies disclose SDGs information.

Table 4.
Descriptive statics

The results reveal that 62% of the companies have a CSR committee. The result is lower than the 79% reported by Konadu et al. (2022)Konadu, R., Ahinful, G. S., Boakye, D. J., & Elbardan, H. (2022). Board gender diversity, environmental innovation and corporate carbon emissions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, 121279, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121279.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021....
. Concerning gender diversity, the average Blau gender is 14.5%, which is similar to 13% reported by Zaid, Wang, Adib, Sahyouni, and Abuhijleh (2020)Zaid, A. A. M., Wang, M., Adib, M., Sahyouni, A., & Abuhijleh, S. T. F. (2020). Boardroom nationality and gender diversity: Implications for corporate sustainability performance. Journal of Cleaner Production, 251, 119652, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119652.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.1...
and higher than 9% and 4% reported by Khan, Khan, and Senturk (2019)Khan, I., Khan, I., & Senturk, I. (2019). Board diversity and quality of CSR disclosure: Evidence from Pakistan. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society, 19(6), doi: 10.1108/CG-12-2018-0371.
https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-12-2018-0371...
and Lu and Herremans (2019)Lu, J., & Herremans, I. M. (2019). Board gender diversity and environmental performance: An industries perspective. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(7), 1449–1464, doi: 10.1002/bse.2326.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2326...
, respectively. However, the result is lower than the 18.5% reported by Li et al. (2022)Li, Y., de Villiers, C., Li, L. Z., & Li, L. (2022). The moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relation between corporate social responsibility and firm value. Journal of Management Control, 33(1), doi: 10.1007/s00187-022-00334-x.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-022-00334...
. The values range from 0 to 0.5.

4.2 Correlation matrix

Table 5 presents the correlation matrix. We use the correlation matrix in our study to measure the strength and direction of the linear relationship between our dependent variable and the independent, moderator and control variables. SDGs disclosure positively correlates with CSR committee, gender diversity, board size, analyst coverage, cash dividend, leverage and size.

Table 5.
Correlation matrix

4.3 Multivariate analysis

Table 6 presents the results of Models 2 and 3. The study used the xtgls routine in the STATA 16 program. The highest variance inflation factor (VIF) of the study was 1.85, indicating that the study does not suffer from a multicollinearity problem, which occurs when the VIF is greater than 10 (Hair, Anderson, Tathan, & Black, 2005Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tathan, R. L, & Black, W. C. (2005). Análise multivariada de dados, Porto Alegre: Bookman.). The results reveal a positive relationship between the presence of a CSR committee and SDGs disclosure at the 5% level, thus supporting H1. In addition, these results suggest that the presence of a CSR committee enables better interaction with stakeholders. Thus, companies with a CSR committee meet stakeholder demands to ensure legitimacy and gain stakeholder legitimacy.

Table 6.
Results

Our evidence also indicates that gender diversity positively moderates the relationship between the presence of a CSR committee and SDGs disclosure, thus supporting H2. These findings conclude that gender diversity influences the SDGs disclosure through the CSR committee. Therefore, the results indicate that gender diversity represents stakeholder interest because it contributes to increased corporate transparency. Regarding the control variables, leverage and firm size positively influence the SDGs disclosure. On the other hand, board size and CEO duality negatively impact SDGs disclosure. These results indicate that more indebted firms are more concerned with sustainability disclosure because they want to show creditors their sustainability performance. The results also suggest that larger firms disclose more SDGs because they have more resources and higher stakeholder pressure.

4.4 Sensitive analysis

In this section, we apply the Shannon index as an alternative measure for gender diversity for higher robustness of the results. Although qualitatively similar to the Blau index, the Shannon index is more sensitive to minor differences in the gender composition of the boards because it is a logarithmic metric (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008Campbell, K., & Mínguez-Vera, A. (2008). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(3), 435–451, doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9630-y.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9630-...
). Table 7 shows the results.

Table 7.
Results

Similar results are observed with the presence of the CSR committee positively influencing SDGs disclosure and gender diversity moderating the gender diversity – SDG disclosure nexus.

5. Discussion

There is little research dealing with SDGs disclosure, which may result from the newness of the topic (Hummel & Szekely, 2022Hummel, K., & Szekely, M. (2022). Disclosure on the sustainable development goals – Evidence from Europe. Accounting in Europe, 19(1), 1–38, doi: 10.1080/17449480.2021.1894347.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2021.18...
). SDGs disclosure affects the firms' engagement with the sustainable goals adopted worldwide (Kücükgül et al., 2022Kücükgül, E., Cerin, P., & Liu, Y. (2022). Enhancing the value of corporate sustainability: An approach for aligning multiple SDGs guides on reporting. Journal of Cleaner Production, 333, 130005, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.130005.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
), and SDGs can help promote sustainability by acting as norms (Yamane & Kaneko, 2022Yamane, T., & Kaneko, S. (2022). The sustainable development goals as new business norms: A survey experiment on stakeholder preferences. Ecological Economics, 191, 107236, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107236.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021....
). However, an auditing tool for SDGs disclosure is necessary for firms because it would improve their level of accountability and transparency (Tsalis et al., 2020Tsalis, T. A., Malamateniou, K. E., Koulouriotis, D., & Nikolaou, I. E. (2020). New challenges for corporate sustainability reporting: United Nations' 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the sustainable development goals. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 27(4), 1617–1629, doi: 10.1002/csr.1910.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1910...
).

The private sector plays a crucial role in achieving the SDGs because it can influence stakeholders, innovate and mobilize resources (Calabrese et al., 2021Calabrese, A., Costa, R., Gastaldi, M., Levialdi Ghiron, N., & Villazon Montalvan, R. A. (2021). Implications for sustainable development goals: A framework to assess company disclosure in sustainability reporting. Journal of Cleaner Production, 319, 128624, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128624.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
). Disclosure is essential to attain good governance (Joseph et al., 2019Joseph, C., Gunawan, J., Madi, N., Janggu, T., Rahmat, M., & Mohamed, N. (2019). Realising sustainable development goals via online integrity framework disclosure: Evidence from Malaysian and Indonesian local authorities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 215, 112–122, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.0...
). Accordingly, firms disclose social information to increase credibility with their stakeholders (Adams, 2002Adams, C. A. (2002). Internal organisational factors influencing corporate social and ethical reporting. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 15(2), 223–250, doi: 10.1108/09513570210418905.
https://doi.org/10.1108/0951357021041890...
). Thus, sustainable companies must be transparent on sustainability issues (Ludwig & Sassen, 2022Ludwig, P., & Sassen, R. (2022). Which internal corporate governance mechanisms drive corporate sustainability? Journal of Environmental Management, 301, 113780, doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113780.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.1...
)

The results suggest that the presence of a CSR committee positively influences SDGs disclosure in Latin American companies. The implementation of the CSR committee ensures the disclosure of CSR activities (Adel et al., 2019Adel, C., Hussain, M. M., Mohamed, E. K. A., & Basuony, M. A. K. (2019). Is corporate governance relevant to the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure in large European companies? International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, 27(2), 301–332, doi: 10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-0118.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJAIM-10-2017-01...
). Fahad and Rahman (2020)Fahad, P., & Rahman, P. M. (2020). Impact of corporate governance on CSR disclosure. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 17(2-3), 155–167, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00082-1.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-020-00082...
suggest that the presence of a CSR committee shows the positive activity of the firm toward social disclosure. In this regard, the existence of the CSR committee indicates the company's CSR engagement (Miras-Rodríguez et al., 2019Miras-Rodríguez, M. D., Martínez-Martínez, D., & Escobar-Pérez, B. (2019). Which corporate governance mechanisms drive CSR disclosure practices in emerging countries?. Sustainability, 11(1), doi: 10.3390/su11010061.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010061...
). Jian et al. (2017)Jian, W. Z., Jaaffar, A. H., Ooi, S. K., & Amran, A. (2017). The effects of national culture, corporate governance and CSR governance on CSR disclosure quality. Global Business and Management Research, 9(4s), 298–314. suggest that the presence of a CSR committee demonstrates the firm's efforts on sustainable issues. Firms that appoint directors as CSR committee members are more committed to providing social disclosure (Adnan et al., 2018Adnan, S. M., Hay, D., & van Staden, C. J. (2018). The influence of culture and corporate governance on corporate social responsibility disclosure: A cross country analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 198, 820–832, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.0...
). Cucari et al. (2018)Cucari, N., de Falco, S. E., & Orlando, B. (2018). Diversity of board of directors and environmental social governance: evidence from Italian listed companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(3), 250-266, doi: 10.1002/csr.1452.
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1452...
conclude that CSR committees can help the company build social legitimacy. Furthermore, CSR committees are primarily responsible for overseeing the company's sustainability activities (Helfaya & Moussa, 2017Helfaya, A., & Moussa, T. (2017). Do board's corporate social responsibility strategy and orientation influence environmental sustainability disclosure? UK evidence. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(8), 1061–1077, doi: 10.1002/bse.1960.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1960...
)

The findings also indicate that gender diversity positively moderates the CSR committee – SDGs disclosure nexus. The increased presence of women on the board promotes proactive strategies that respond to stakeholder demands for more sustainability disclosure (Ben-Amar et al., 2017Ben-Amar, W., Chang, M., & McIlkenny, P. (2017). Board gender diversity and corporate response to sustainability initiatives: Evidence from the carbon disclosure project. Journal of Business Ethics, 142(2), 369–383, doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2759-1.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2759-...
). Nadeem et al. (2017)Nadeem, M., Zaman, R., & Saleem, I. (2017). Boardroom gender diversity and corporate sustainability practices: Evidence from Australian securities exchange listed firms. Journal of Cleaner Production, 149, 874–885, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.141.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.0...
conclude that gender diversity boosts firms' commitment to corporate sustainability. Women directors are less likely to engage in unsustainable practices (Kiefner et al., 2022Kiefner, V., Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. (2022). Female executives and multinationals' support of the UN's sustainable development goals. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101304, doi: 10.1016/j.jwb.2021.101304.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2021.10130...
). Liao et al. (2015)Liao, L., Luo, L., & Tang, Q. (2015). Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure. The British Accounting Review, 47(4), 409–424, doi: 10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.002.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2014.01.00...
suggest that a more diverse board represents a broader range of stakeholders. When stakeholders request nonfinancial information from firms, gender diversity leads to greater disclosure of SDGs (Gurol & Lagasio, 2022Gurol, B., & Lagasio, V. (2022). Women board members’ impact on ESG disclosure with environment and social dimensions: evidence from the European banking sector. Social Responsibility Journal, doi: 10.1108/SRJ-08-2020-0308.
https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-08-2020-0308...
). Thus, gender diversity reinforces the promoting effect of a CSR committee presence on SDGs disclosure.

The results take into account the Latin American context. Latin America is characterized by weak legal protection and control of family ownership (Baselga-Pascual & Vähämaa, 2021Baselga-Pascual, L., & Vähämaa, E. (2021). Female leadership and bank performance in Latin America. Emerging Markets Review, 48, 100807, doi: 10.1016/j.ememar.2021.100807.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ememar.2021.10...
), with countries such as Argentina (65%), Brazil (90%), Chile (75%), Colombia (46%) and Mexico (95%) having a high presence of family businesses (Cortés & Botero, 2016Cortés, D. L., & Botero, I. C. (2016). Corporate governance in family businesses from Latin America, Spain and Portugal: A review of the literature. Academia Revista Latinoamericana de Administración, 29(3), doi: 10.1108/ARLA-03-2016-0064.
https://doi.org/10.1108/ARLA-03-2016-006...
). Furthermore, the principal-principal conflict also occurs in this region, with virtually nonexistent shareholder rights (Husted & Sousa-Filho, 2019Husted, B. W., & Sousa-Filho, JMd (2019). Board structure and environmental, social, and governance disclosure in Latin America. Journal of Business Research, 102, 220–227, doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.01.017.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.0...
). Accordingly, there is weak protection for minority shareholders (Crisóstomo et al., 2020Crisóstomo, V. L., Brandão, I. de F., & López-Iturriaga, F. J. (2020). Large shareholders’ power and the quality of corporate governance: An analysis of Brazilian firms. Research in International Business and Finance, 51, 101076, doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101076.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101...
). Thus, the evidence considers the context of countries with weak corporate governance, high ownership concentration, strong presence of family businesses and weak minority shareholder protection.

In sum, the results are in line with the stakeholder theory, which states that the presence of a CSR committee and gender diversity allows for better dialogue with stakeholders. These stakeholders seek greater sustainability disclosure to meet their interests. Therefore, the presence of a CSR committee also allows for higher disclosure of SDGs. Moreover, gender diversity reinforces this disclosure.

6. Conclusions

Using a sample of 238 companies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru for 2018–2020, this study examines the impact of the CSR committees on the SDGs disclosure. Drawing from stakeholder theory, the study also investigates whether gender diversity moderates the relationship between CSR committee presence – SDGs disclosure. The study uses the FGLS estimation technique.

The results indicate that the CSR committee presence positively influences SDG disclosure and show that gender diversity does indeed have a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between the presence of CSR committee and SDG disclosure. Thus, the CSR committee boosts sustainable behavior (Khan, 2022Khan, M. A. (2022). ESG disclosure and firm performance: A bibliometric and meta analysis. Research in International Business and Finance, 61, 101668, doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101668.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101...
), and firms with higher gender diversity can focus on the interests of their stakeholders (Yarram & Adapa, 2021Yarram, S. R., & Adapa, S. (2021). Board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility: Is there a case for critical mass? Journal of Cleaner Production, 278, 123319, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123319.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.1...
). This leads to better sustainable performance in Latin American companies. It is worth noting that implementing the SDGs in Latin America is challenging and essential (Siegel & Bastos Lima, 2020Siegel, K. M., & Bastos Lima, M. G. (2020). When international sustainability frameworks encounter domestic politics: The sustainable development goals and agri-food governance in South America. World Development, 135, 105053, doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105053.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020....
). For example, insecurity and violence represent significant challenges in Latin America (Salvia, Leal Filho, Brandli, & Griebeler, 2019Salvia, A. L., Leal Filho, W., Brandli, L. L., & Griebeler, J. S. (2019). Assessing research trends related to sustainable development goals: Local and global issues. Journal of Cleaner Production, 208, 841–849, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.242.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.0...
). Unemployment, informality, low productivity, accusations of corruption and social unrest such as forced displacement, crime and terrorism have characterized the Latin American region for over a century (Gonzalez-Perez, Mohieldin, Hult, & Velez-Ocampo, 2021Gonzalez-Perez, M. A., Mohieldin, M., Hult, G. T. M., & Velez-Ocampo, J. (2021). COVID-19, sustainable development challenges of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the potential engines for an SDGs-based recovery. Management Research, 19(1), 22-37, doi: 10.1108/MRJIAM-12-2020-1119.
https://doi.org/10.1108/MRJIAM-12-2020-1...
). This region has 37.3% (230.9 million) of the population living in poverty, with 15.5% (96.2 million) living in extreme poverty (Hernandez-Pozas, Murcia, Ogliastri, & Olivas-Lujan, 2021Hernandez-Pozas, O., Murcia, M. J., Ogliastri, E., & Olivas-Lujan, M. R. (2021). Management and sustainability dilemmas in Latin America: Introduction. Academia Revista Latinoamericana de Administración, 34(1), doi: 10.1108/ARLA-06-2020-0147.
https://doi.org/10.1108/ARLA-06-2020-014...
).

The study has theoretical implications. First, the results validate the stakeholder theory that posits that firms with both a CSR committee and gender diversity meet stakeholders' needs for higher sustainability disclosure. As a result, these companies have a better dialogue with stakeholders, ensuring a good reputation among them. Second, the article broadens the perspective of sustainability disclosure research. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies that examine the relationship between CSR committee presence and SDG disclosure. Furthermore, the study adds gender diversity to analyze the effect of the CSR committee on SDG disclosure. Finally, this paper brings a metric of SDGs disclosure. To calculate this metric, we divided the number of SDGs disclosed by the company in a given year and the total number of SDGs (17).

The study has practical implications. First, most studies involving sustainability issues were conducted in developed countries. Thus, there is a lack of study on sustainability in developing countries, such as Latin American ones. In developing countries, there is a greater degree of uncertainty in investment opportunities, which increases the need for companies to disclose more sustainability information (Cicchiello et al., 2021Cicchiello, A. F., Fellegara, A. M., Kazemikhasragh, A., & Monferrà, S. (2021). Gender diversity on corporate boards: How Asian and African women contribute on sustainability reporting activity. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 36(7), doi: 10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147.
https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-05-2020-0147...
). In this context, Latin America's sustainability issues require a better long-term understanding (Filho et al., 2021Filho, W. L., Amaro, N., Avila, L. V., Brandli, L., Damke, L. I., Vasconcelos, C. R. P., … Salvia, A. (2021). Mapping sustainability initiatives in higher education institutions in Latin America. Journal of Cleaner Production, 315, 128093, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128093.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.1...
). Thus, this paper helps managers of Latin American companies disclose sustainability issues by showing the benefits of SDGs disclosure. Second, in the context of corporate governance, Latin America has characteristics such as weak minority shareholder protection, principal–principal conflict and the strong presence of family firms. Thus, the study indicates the need for policies for better corporate governance in Latin American firms. Finally, this paper suggests that gender diversity and CSR committees are essential elements for greater sustainability disclosure, i. e. policymakers can adopt laws that motivate gender diversity and the CSR committee presence.

Nevertheless, the study has limitations. First, it does not incorporate macroinstitutional factors that can influence the dissemination of SDGs, such as political, social and cultural factors. Second, the paper focus only on the Latin American context. Future studies could consider different institutional contexts to explore changes in how CSR committees and gender diversity can influence SDGs disclosure. Finally, the paper used an SDGs disclosure metric that does not address qualitative aspects, like word count. Thus, future research could address such qualitative aspects.

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    » https://doi.org/10.1108/JGR-01-2016-0001
  • Velte, P. (2018). Does gender diversity in the audit committee influence key audit matters' readability in the audit report? UK evidence. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(5), 748–755, doi: 10.1002/csr.1491.
    » https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1491
  • Wasiuzzaman, S., & Wan Mohammad, W. M. (2020). Board gender diversity and transparency of environmental, social and governance disclosure: Evidence from Malaysia. Managerial and Decision Economics, 41(1), 145–156, doi: 10.1002/mde.3099.
    » https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.3099
  • Wicaksono, A. P., & Setiawan, D. (2022). Water disclosure in the agriculture industry: Does stakeholder influence matter? Journal of Cleaner Production, 337, 130605, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130605.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130605
  • Yamane, T., & Kaneko, S. (2022). The sustainable development goals as new business norms: A survey experiment on stakeholder preferences. Ecological Economics, 191, 107236, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107236.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107236
  • Yarram, S. R., & Adapa, S. (2021). Board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility: Is there a case for critical mass? Journal of Cleaner Production, 278, 123319, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123319.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123319
  • Yu, S., Sial, M. S., Tran, D. K., Badulescu, A., Thu, P. A., & Sehleanu, M. (2020). Adoption and implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in China – Agenda 2030. In Sustainability, 12(15), doi: 10.3390/su12156288.
    » https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156288
  • Zaid, A. A. M., Wang, M., Adib, M., Sahyouni, A., & Abuhijleh, S. T. F. (2020). Boardroom nationality and gender diversity: Implications for corporate sustainability performance. Journal of Cleaner Production, 251, 119652, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119652.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119652

Further reading

  • Bravo, F., & Reguera-Alvarado, N. (2019). Sustainable development disclosure: Environmental, social, and governance reporting and gender diversity in the audit committee. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(2), 418–429, doi: 10.1002/bse.2258.
    » https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2258
  • Brasil. (2017). Voluntary national review on the sustainable development goals. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/15806Brazil_English.pdf
    » https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/15806Brazil_English.pdf
  • Briano-Turrent, G. D. C., Li, M., & Peng, H. (2020). The impact of family-CEOs and their demographic characteristics on dividend payouts: Evidence from Latin America. Research in International Business and Finance, 51, 101086. doi: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101086.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101086
  • Kabbach-de-Castro, L. R., Kalatzis, A. E. G., & Pellicani, A. D. (2021). Do financial constraints in an unstable emerging economy mitigate the opportunistic behavior of entrenched family owners? Emerging Markets Review, 100838, doi: 10.1108/ARLA-06-2020-0147.
    » https://doi.org/10.1108/ARLA-06-2020-0147
  • Nobanee, H., & Ellili, N. (2016). Corporate sustainability disclosure in annual reports: Evidence from UAE banks: Islamic versus conventional. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 55, 1336–1341, doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.07.084.
    » https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.07.084
  • Nuber, C., & Velte, P. (2021). Board gender diversity and carbon emissions: European evidence on curvilinear relationships and critical mass. Business Strategy and the Environment, 30(4), doi: 10.1002/bse.2727.
    » https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2727

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    02 Dec 2022
  • Date of issue
    Oct-Dec 2022

History

  • Received
    01 Feb 2022
  • Reviewed
    07 June 2022
  • Reviewed
    16 Aug 2022
  • Accepted
    16 Aug 2022
Universidade de São Paulo Avenida Professor Luciano Gualberto, 908, sala F184, CEP: 05508-900, São Paulo , SP - Brasil, Telefone: (11) 3818-4002 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: rausp@usp.br