Board of directors characteristics and corporate social responsibility disclousure--study with Portuguese listed companies/Caracteristicas do conselho de administracao e divulgacao de responsabilidade social corporativa--estudo das empresas na bolsa de valores de lisboa

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concept has been growing up with a considered number of companies. This trend has been realized by the ontities through the adoption of measures that take an active role in the economic, social and environmental fields. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the board of directors and the disclosure level of information about the CSR by companies with listed securities on the Lisbon Stock Exchange. It was used a variable level of CSR disclosure practices and as explanatory variables the main characteristics associated to corporate governance. The empirical results show that the proportion of non-executive directors on the board of directors is the feature that most influences the level of CSR disclosure practices. The features related to the independence of directors or the duality power on the board has not confirmed the initial predictions as influencing the level of CSR disclosure. In general, the empirical evidence found suggests that the board of directors characteristics have a relatively weak influence on the level of CSR disclosure. KEYWORDS: Corporate Social Responsibility. Disclosure. Board of directors characteristics. O conceito de Responsabilidade Social Corporativa (RSC) tem vindo a ser assumido por um numero crescente de empresas. Essa tendencia tem-se consubstanciado na adocao de medidas tanto internas como junto da comunidade em geral, que visam a assuncao por parte das entidades de um papel ativo na esfera economica, social e ambiental. Este estudo tem como objetivo investigar a relacao entre as caracteristicas do conselho de administracao das sociedades e o nivel de divulgacao de informacao acerca da RSC por parte das empresas com valores cotados na Bolsa de Valores de Lisboa. Para a investigacao foi utilizada como variavel dependente o nivel de praticas de divulgacao de RSC e como variaveis explicativas as principais caracteristicas associadas ao governo das sociedades. Os resultados empiricos obtidos mostram que a proporcao de conselheiros nao executivos que integram o conselho de administracao e a caracteristica que mais influencia o nivel das praticas de divulgacao de RSC. As caracteristicas relacionadas com a independencia dos conselheiros ou a dualidade do poder no Conselho de administracao nao confirmaram as predicoes iniciais de influencia sobre o nivel de divulgacao da RSC. Em termos gerais, a evidencia empirica encontrada sugere que as caracterist