Analysis of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in the brazilian firm

Abstract

The Stakeholder framework proposes that firms should follow a policy for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that comprises attention to all their stakeholders. Increasingly, firms are being more demanded for appropriate social and environmental practices by their stakeholders. The relevance given to the adoption of good corporate governance practices is seen as important in the relationship between the firm and the market given that it favors a more ethical behavior of the firm. This more ethical behavior may be converted into better compliance to good principles of conduct that may favor firm's CSR. This work aims to evaluate the effect of Corporate Governance on the CSR of Brazilian firm. For a sample of 1,965 firm-year observations from 303 companies listed in B3, Logit regression models were estimated and tests for the difference in proportions were performed. The results show a trend of favorable influence of the quality of corporate governance over CSR in Brazil. This finding indicates that better firm corporate governance leads to a better standard of CSR. The adoption of best corporate governance practices seems to be, in fact, a factor that contributes to the implementation of better CSR policy. It means that, when paying attention to good firm management, control and ethical behavior, the firm is also paying attention to the