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Impact of
Impact of board characteristics on board
governance, environmental and characteristics

ethical disclosure
Hanen Khaireddine
University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
Received 27 May 2019
Bassem Salhi and Jabr Aljabr Revised 27 October 2019
22 January 2020
Department of Accounting, College of Business Administration, Accepted 19 February 2020
Majmaah University, Al Majma’ah, Saudi Arabia, and
Anis Jarboui
University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate how board characteristics impact the governance,
environmental and ethics disclosure. Board characteristics such as board size, gender diversity, board
independence, CEO/chair duality and board meeting are included.
Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a sample of 82 companies listed in the SBF120
between 2012 and 2017. A number of econometric techniques are used such as generalized least squares to
test the panel regressions.
Findings – Board independence, board gender diversity and board meetings have a positive and significant
influence on governance, environmental and ethics disclosure. Board size is positively and significantly
associated only with corporate environmental disclosure. The adoption of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI,
G4) has not affected or biased the corporate governance (CG), environmental and ethics disclosure.
Originality/value – This study adds to the literature on management reporting behavior and ethics and
contributes to the extant CG literature by offering new evidence on the disclosure of good CG practices as well
as environmental and ethics behavior. This study offers new insights about the potential influence of board
characteristics on such specific disclosure practices focusing “during the optional period of GRI4 and after
their mandatory adoption”.
Keywords France, Global reporting initiative (GRI), Board characteristics,
Environmental disclosure, CG disclosure, Ethical disclosure
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Corporate governance (CG), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate ethical
concepts have certain common features and all these three concepts are interrelated. CG
demands that the Chief Executive Officer provides more transparency and accountability,
whereas CSR involves supporting the surrounding community with social activities.
Ultimately, business ethics clarify moral values for the employees to help managers to make
their firms more accountable and transparent (Tays ir and Pazarcık, 2013). The lack of
transparency and disclosure was often considered as one of the major causes of the latest
corporate scandals and governance failures, adversely affecting public confidence in the Society and Business Review
reliability of corporate and financial reporting (García-Sánchez et al., 2011). Over the past few © Emerald Publishing Limited
1746-5680
years, researchers have attempted to study the motivations behind disclosing non-financial DOI 10.1108/SBR-05-2019-0067
SBR information in different contexts (Baalouch et al., 2019). Thus, corporate disclosure is very
much essential for the growth and development of a firm in the particular equity market and
for all stakeholders because it provides them the necessary information to reduce the
uncertainty and help them to make proper economic and financial decisions (Ruwini and
Nimalathasan, 2019; Alhazaimeh et al., 2014). In the same vein, Giannarakis et al. (2019)
argued that disclosure of information or transparency is an integral part of CG because
higher disclosure can reduce information asymmetry, which not only clarifies the conflicts of
interests between shareholders and management but also makes management more
accountable.
The last decade has witnessed an increased interest in the disclosure of voluntary CG
practices (Melis et al., 2015; Ntim, 2015; Al-Bassam et al., 2018; Ntim et al., 2017). In fact,
Bhasin and Shaikh (2013) argued that that disclosure about CG is a fundamental theme of
the modern corporate regulatory system that encompasses providing information by a
company to the public in a variety of ways. Similarly, environmental issues have allured a
significant interest within the scientific community because of the numerous consequences
on ecosystems and human lives (Huisingh et al., 2015; Giannarakis et al., 2019). Therefore, in
recent times, research on environmental disclosures gained prominence (Giannarakis et al.,
2019; Odoemelam and Okafor, 2018; Baboukardos, 2017; Akbas, 2016; Liao et al., 2015;
Huisingh et al., 2015). In fact, companies voluntarily disclose environmental information to
obtain the impression of the society that they are socially responsible (Welbeck et al., 2017
and Ofoegbu et al., 2018) and to maintain their legitimacy. In the same vein, Díez-Martín
et al. (2013) reported that a number of organizations have failed not because they lack
resources or because of faulty products but because of a complete loss or deterioration of
their legitimacy. Moreover, some researchers have devoted considerable attention to firms’
ethics disclosure (Othman et al., 2014; Chan et al., 2014; Sullivan and Shkolnikov, 2006;
Mallin et al., 2013 and Chan et al., 2014). According to Sullivan and Shkolnikov (2006), ethics
disclosure is a voluntary disclosure made by certain companies to enhance their CG.
Othman et al. (2014) indicated that ethical codes represent the values and principles
provided by the companies to ensure that the entire organizations adhere and comply with
the codes and act. Otherwise, ethical codes include the core values of the companies and
guidelines for matters such as relationship with customer and suppliers, employee relations,
confidential information, conflicts of interest, competition and others.
In this context, disclosure and the quality of CG system are appreciated as closely related
concepts. In fact, the higher the level of transparency, the better the quality of CG practices
 tef
anescu, 2013). The board of directors is a vital component of CG that aims at
(S
minimizing agency problems and is responsible for hiring, firing and compensating the top-
level decision managers and approving crucial strategic initiatives (Fama and Jensen, 1983).
Thus, it plays a crucial role in influencing company disclosure. Ahmad et al. (2017)
argued that the increased importance of CSR, boards’ roles and responsibilities extended
from the traditional shareholder-centric view to encompass various stakeholders. Hence, a
prior research examines the influence of board characteristics on CG disclosure (Elmagrhi
et al., 2016; Al-Bassam et al., 2018; Ntim et al., 2015; S tef
anescu, 2013), environmental
disclosure (Giannarakis et al., 2019; Odoemelam and Okafor, 2018; Baboukardos, 2017;
Akbas, 2016; Liao et al., 2015) and CSR performance and corporate responses to ethical
responsibilities (Chan et al., 2014).
This study extends previous studies by analyzing the impact of board characteristics on
CG, environmental and ethics disclosure of French companies. It also contributes to the
recent literature on the information transparency and accountability.
 The current study is motivated by the nature of the regulatory framework of CG, Impact of
environmental and ethics disclosure in the French context. The French context is board
characterized by a widely implemented regulatory framework of CG and environmental and
ethics disclosure. In fact, the French context is considered as a pioneer country that enacted
characteristics
legislation for mandatory social and environmental disclosure. For instance, the Nouvelle
Regulation Economique (NRE) Act, launched in 2001, requires listed companies to integrate
social and environmental information into their annual reports. However, this law is
characterized by the lack of its specificity, which does not appear to improve the quality of
CSR disclosure. Therefore, the Grenelle Act II of 2012 was set up to address the gaps in that
law.
This study is organized as follows. The next section presents the theoretical framework,
reviews the empirical literature and develops the hypotheses. Section III outlines the
research methodology and discusses the results of the paper. The concluding remarks of the
paper are then provided in the final section.

2. Theoretical framework and literature review

2.1 Theoretical framework
Several theories, such as agency theory, stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory, are used
by researchers to explain why firms are engaged in voluntarily disclosing information.
These theories are used as a support for the link between CG and disclosure behavior.
The most frequently used one to explain the CG disclosure is agency theory. This theory
focuses on the conflict between shareholders and managers, which arises when the
shareholders delegate decision-making powers to the managers (Jensen and Meckling, 1976).
Hence, from the agency theory perspective, company disclosure is used to harmonize the
interests of managers and shareholders. To summarize, agency theory suggests that best
practices of CG make companies more accountable to shareholders and other stakeholders
and it helps to mitigate managerial opportunism, thus reducing the agency costs.
Stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory can explain environmental disclosure practices
(Ofoegbu et al., 2018). From a stakeholder theory perspective, the board is responsible for
balancing the interests of all stakeholders and safeguarding their interests. Therefore, this
can be achieved via the dissemination of information (Frias-Aceituno et al., 2013). In fact,
stakeholder theory is considered, for instance, as an explainable theory for corporate
environmental accounting (Depoers et al., 2016; Liao et al., 2015). It involves the recognition
and identification of the relationship existing between the company’s behavior and its
impact on its stakeholders. According to stakeholder theory, companies should be able to
respond to complex regulations and build trusting, engaging and constructive dialogue with
their stakeholders to develop a competitive advantage (Baalouch et al., 2019).
Legitimacy theory is perceived as a possible reason for the recent rapid increase in
environmental disclosure as corporate entities strive to be greenish in their operations
(Braam et al., 2016; Prasad et al., 2016). This theory postulates that firms primarily disclose
environmental information to maintain the implicit social contract, enhance their continuous
existence in the environment and prevent legitimacy crises (Ofoegbu et al. (2018)).

2.2 Literature review and hypotheses development

In this study, we identify the potential board mechanisms that affect the voluntary CG,
environmental and ethics disclosure. Specifically, we examine how board size, board
independence, gender diversity, duality and meeting frequency influence firms decision to
disclose information about CG practices and environmental and ethical responsibility.
SBR 2.2.1 Board size. Board size refers to the number of both inside and outside directors that
serve on a corporate board. Larger boards are often characterized by greater diversity in
terms of experience, financial expertise and capabilities to solve problems, which can
improve firm reputation and image (Ntim, 2015) and consequently improve board efficiency
in scrutinizing and detecting opportunistic behaviors of managers (Elmagrhi et al., 2016 and
Mallin et al., 2013).
Some studies discovered that, compared with corporations with smaller boards,
corporations with larger boards are more likely to increase disclosure of information relating
to their CG practices (Cunha and Lu ~cia, 2018; Elmagrhi et al., 2016; Al-Bassam et al., 2018;
Samaha et al., 2012). Moreover, previous studies reported a positive relationship between
board size and environmental disclosures (Jizi et al., 2014; Akbas, 2016; Trireksani and
Djajadikerta, 2016; Wang, 2017; Liao et al., 2015; Ezhilarasi and Kabra, 2017; Tauringana
and Chithambo, 2015 and Osazuwa et al., 2016). Similarly, Ahmad et al. (2017) and Shahab
and Ye (2018) argued that board size positively relates to the level of CSR reporting.
Furthermore, there is an argument that a larger board is conducive to ethics disclosure
because there is a higher possibility that the board will include highly ethical members who
could influence ethics disclosure (Sankara et al., 2017).
However, studies suggested that larger boards are associated with co-ordination,
communication and monitoring problems (Ciampi, 2015), which can negatively impact CG
disclosure (S tef
anescu, 2013; Ntim et al., 2015) and environmental disclosures (Kantudu and
Samaila, 2015). Thus, the more directorships held by board members, less likely the
company will disclose information about governance and the environment. Moreover,
Sankara et al. (2017) reported a non-significant association between the board size and
ethical CSR disclosure.
This divergence of results concludes that there is no consensus on the impact of board
size of the voluntary disclosure. Some argue in favor of a larger size; however, others show
that a reduced number of directors strengthen the level of voluntary disclosure.
Based on the agency theory, small boards are more effective in monitoring and
considering the fact that most codes of good governance usually recommend limitations to
the size of a board; thus, we develop H2 as follows:

H1. There is a negative association between board size and the governance,
environmental and ethics disclosure.
2.2.2 Board independence. Board independence has been considered a key feature of good
CG. Since the first signs of agency theory’s development, non-executive directors are able to
monitor and control opportunistic behaviors of the executive ones (Jensen and Meckling,
1976). The stakeholder theory buttresses the importance of having independent directors in
board composition to protect the interest of investors (Arayssi et al., 2016). Thus, the
presence of independent outside directors may not only enhance efficiency for shareholders
by mitigating agency conflicts but can also enhance legitimacy by acting as representative
of different groups of stakeholders (Ntim and Soobaroyen, 2013 and Elmagrhi et al., 2016).
According to Ntim and Soobaroyen (2013), independent outside directors tend to bring
greater diversity to corporate boards, including knowledge, skills and business contacts.
Most researchers expected that board independence increases voluntary disclosure (Chau
and Gray, 2010; Samaha et al., 2015). Thus, there are findings revealing a positive
association between board independence and disclosure about CG practices (Samaha et al.,
2012; Mallin and Ow-Yong, 2012; S tef
anescu, 2013; Elmagrhi et al., 2016; Cunha and Lu~cia,
2018). Furthermore, other studies supported board independence and provided evidence that
it had a positive impact on both environmental disclosure (Liao et al., 2015; Eberhardt-Toth,
2017; Wang, 2017 and Giannarakis et al., 2019) and CSR disclosure (Jizi et al., 2014; Lau et al., Impact of
2016; Shahab and Ye, 2018; Ahmad et al., 2017; Sankara et al., 2017; Braz and Lopes, 2018). board
Nevertheless, Baalouch et al. (2019) reported that the presence of independent directors on
the board is significant but negatively associated with quality of environmental disclosure,
characteristics
thus confirming that these directors do not enhance non-financial disclosure. Furthermore,
Sankara et al. (2017) identified a negative and significant relation between board
independence and the likelihood of meeting the minimum legal conflict mineral reporting
requirements. The study of Othman et al. (2014) postulated that an independent audit
committee, as an internal governance mechanism, is positively influencing corporate ethics
disclosure. We expect that independent board as an important internal governance
mechanism would lead to ethics disclosure.
However, studies have suggested a negative relationship between the proportion of
independent directors and voluntary disclosure (Al-Moataz and Hussainey, 2013; Rodrigues
et al., 2017). Furthermore, and in line with the results of Allergrini and Greco (2013),
Mahmood et al. (2018) did not find any association between board independence and
sustainability reporting. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2. There is a positive association between the representation of non-executive

directors on the board and governance, environmental and ethics disclosure.
2.2.3 Board gender diversity. The Unified Code of Corporate Governance (CUBG, 2006)
recommends the inclusion of women on the Board of Directors as a challenge not only to the
ethics, policies and CSR but also to make it more efficient (Castilla-Polo et al., 2018).
In France, the context of our study, the law requires 50 per cent gender parity on the
board of every public firm by 2015 (Post et al., 2015). Adams et al. (2015) argued that men
and women present differences in terms of ethical behavior and that those female directors
that have different values and are more stakeholders oriented. Pechersky (2016) indicated
that diversity on boards of directors contributes to a greater variety of backgrounds and
knowledge, indicating different points of view that lead to better strategic decision making.
Thus, gender diversity became recognized characteristic of board diversity (Mahmood et al.,
2018). Hence, authors defend that the presence of more women on boards of directors is very
beneficial for companies. For instance, Post et al. (2011) argued that gender diversity on the
board of directors improve the chances that different types of knowledge, ideas and
perspectives will be considered in the decision-making process. Consequently, a firm’s board
may improve its performance/efficiency (Upadhyay and Zeng, 2014) by linking the firm to
its external environment, which may allow access to crucial resources (Ntim and
Soobaroyen, 2013)
The literature suggested that female directors improve firm disclosure via better
monitoring (Liao et al., 2014; Sartawi et al., 2014 and Aribi et al., 2018).
Previous studies on the association between board gender diversity and disclosure about
CG, environment and ethics offers mixed results.
Although S tef
anescu (2013) reported a negative association between gender diversity
and CG disclosure, Ntim and Soobaroyen (2013) and Elmagrhi et al. (2016) showed that
board diversity positively impacts CG disclosure.
Previous studies agrue that women are more socially responsible (Post et al. (2011);
because the presence of women in management positively influences the company’s socially
responsible behavior (Braz and Lopes, 2018; Martínez-Ferrero et al., 2015). In the same vein,
various studies argued that environmental disclosure by companies is positively associated
with gender diversity on board (Ben-Amar et al., 2017; Liao et al., 2014; Rupley et al., 2012;
Liao et al., 2015; Giannarakis et al., 2019).
SBR A recent study conducted by Baalouch et al. (2019) indicated that the presence of
women on the board of directors allows companies to be better financial performers and
take concerted action toward another pillar of sustainability, i.e. environmental
performance. However, Prado-Lorenzo and Garcia-Sanchez (2010), a non-relationship
between the board gender diversity and disclosure of greenhouse gas emission
information was identified.
Yusoff et al. (2016) reported that both male and female board members have insignificant
influence on CSR disclosures. Moreover, a stream of literature examines the differences in
ethical decision-making between male and female executives. Compared to their male
counterparts, female marketing professionals demonstrate higher ethics research judgment
(Akaah Ishmael, 1989). Van Staveren (2014) analyzed the Lehman Sisters Hypothesis (the
claim that if there were more women at the top, the banking crisis would not have occurred)
where the effect of gender differences in risk aversion, ethics and leadership were discussed.
In particular, board diversity is associated with greater ethical compliance (Isidro and
Sobral, 2015). For instance, Sankara et al. (2017) reported that gender diversity on the board
is positively associated with ethical CSR disclosure and particularly with the likelihood of
feeling the CY2013 form SD on time. Thus, we propose our third hypothesis as follows:

H3. There is a positive relationship between the proportion of females on the board of
directors and governance, environmental and ethics disclosure.
2.2.4 Duality. CEO duality is the practice of one person serving both as a firm’s CEO and
board chair. The CEO is a firm’s chief strategist who is in charge of initiating and
implementing company-wide plans and policies; however, the role of the chairperson is to
ensure that the board effectively works in advising and monitoring the CEO (Chancharat
et al., 2012).
Empirical studies on the relationship between CEO duality and voluntary CG disclosure
are mixed. While Parsa et al. (2007) reported no significant relationship between the two
variables, Scholtz and Smit (2015) argued that the role duality influence negatively CG
disclosure. Thus, companies in which the CEO and chairman of the board are separated are
more likely to conform to CG recommendation.
Indeed, Velayutham (2014) concluded that CEO duality has a negative correlation with
the quality of greenhouse gas emission disclosure. This result was in line with the agency
theory that supports the separation of the two functions because the concentration of both
functions in one person creates abuse of power that undermines the board’s independence
and reduces the power of the board. Hence, CEO duality may lead to ineffective and
opportunistic behaviour (Jensen and Meckling, 1976) because of the excessive concentration
of power (Castilla-Polo et al., 2018). Otherwise, Shahab and Ye (2018) and Khan et al. (2013)
reported a non-significant impact of CEO duality on CSR disclosure. Furthermore, Sankara
et al. (2017) reported that CEO duality has no significant impact with ethical CSR disclosure,
particularly with both the likelihood of feeling the CY2013 form SD on time and the
likelihood of meeting the minimum legal conflict minerals reporting requirements. Based on
these arguments, we set our fourth hypothesis as follows:

H4. Governance, environmental and ethics disclosure is negatively correlated with the
CEO duality.
2.2.5 Frequency of board meetings. The objective is to strengthen the control and validate
the decisions taken by the CEO to ensure that he manages in accordance with the prescribed
guidelines (Dalla Via and Perego, 2018).
 S tef
anescu (2013) reported a positive association between the frequency of board Impact of
meetings and the extent of CG disclosure. Yusoff et al. (2016) argued that boards that meet board
more regularly are more involved in the firm’s CSR and disclosure. Similarly, Giannarakis
et al. (2019) confirmed a significant positive association between environmental disclosure
characteristics
and the number of board meetings held per year. The results of Ofoegbu et al. (2018)
indicated that board meeting do not significantly influence the extent of environmental
disclosure of listed firms in South Africa and Nigeria. Recently, a study of Sankara et al.
(2017) reported that more frequent board meetings are positively associated with ethical
CSR disclosure, particularly with the likelihood of meeting the minimum legal conflict
mineral reporting requirements. In the same vein, Othman et al. (2014) highlighted that more
frequent audit committee meetings should be more effective in monitoring the company and
would lead to ethics disclosure. Therefore, we assume a positive relationship between the
frequency of board meetings and voluntary ethics disclosure. Based on these prior research
results, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H5. There is a positive association between the frequency of board meetings and
governance, environmental and ethics disclosure.

2.3 Conceptual model

Based on the arguments presented above, the conceptual model proposed in this study is
presented in Figure 1.

3. Research methodology
3.1 Sample
Our initial sample comprises all the companies belonging to the SBF 120 index (French
stock exchange companies) over the 2012-2017 period. Data concerning governance,
environment and ethics disclosure were collected from Thomson Reuters-ASSET 4. ASEET
4, a Thomson Reuters business, provides objective and systematic environmental, social and
governance information to professional investors who are interested in integrating social
responsibility features into their investment decisions. All the disclosure variables were
manually collected by analyzing annual reports and CG reports. The secondary sources
concern financial and accounting data. These are primarily collected from the Thomson One
Banker and Datastream databases. From this sample, we eliminated financial and insurance
companies and companies with missing data or outliers. Thus, the final sample comprises
82 firms, making a total of 492 firm-year observations.

Board Size

Board Independence 1. CG Disclosure Index

Board
Characteristics Gender diversity
2. Environmental Disclosure
CEO Duality Index
Figure 1.
3. Ethics Disclosure Index Conceptual model of
Frequency of Board meetings the study
SBR 3.2 The dependent variable: the disclosure indexes
This study adopts an item-based approach and assigns a value of 1 when a recommendation
has been adopted and a value of 0 otherwise. The recommendations were tested against the
information that appeared in the annual reports of each company for the reporting periods in
the sample. The disclosure index is based on the number of recommendations adopted
divided by the number of required recommendations.

Corporate governance disclosure index (CGDI).

CGDI is measured as the number of CG recommendations adopted by a company divided by

the number of required recommendations. Our approach is supported by most prior studies
aimed to develop such an index of disclosure (S  tef
anescu, 2013; Scholtz and Smit, 2015;
Elmagrhi et al., 2016; Al-Bassam et al., 2018).

P n
CGDI ¼ quantity i=max quantity
i¼1

where:
quantity i = 1 if item i is disclosed; 0 if item i is not disclosed;
MAX Quantity = maximum applicable disclosure quantity score; and
n = number of items disclosed.

Corporate environment disclosure index (ENVDI).

To measure the second dependent variable, i.e. information environment, various measures
were suggested in the literature. According to Odoemelam and Okafor (2018) and Ofoegbu
et al. (2018), ENVDI for each company is computed according to the following equation:

P n
ENVDI ¼ quantity i=max quantity
i¼1

where:
quantity i = 1 if item i is disclosed; 0 if item i is not disclosed;
MAX Quantity = maximum applicable disclosure quantity score; and
n = number of items disclosed.

Voluntary ethics disclosure(ETHDI).

Measurement: 1 for ethics disclosure, 0 otherwise.

Othman et al. (2014) identified certain types of ethics disclosure. Compliance with applicable
laws and regulations is the most ethical areas that had been disclosed by companies.
Reporting of writing a code of ethics.

Having a board of director (BOD) committee with oversight responsibility related to ethics;

Reporting of accounting complaints and illegal behavior;

Conflict of interest between personal and professional relationships;

Disclosing about the treatment of confidential information;

Commercial bribery;

Competition and fair dealing; and

Disciplinary action for violation of the code. Impact of
board
n characteristics
P
ETHDI ¼ quantity i=max quantity
i¼1

where:
quantity i = 1 if item i is disclosed; 0 if item i is not disclosed;
MAX Quantity = maximum applicable disclosure quantity score; and
n = number of items disclosed.

3.3 Independent variables

The independent variables in our analysis are those indicated in the previously formulated
hypotheses to be tested. Below are the methods that are used to calculate them.
The board size in line with the main studies on the subject (Al-Bassam et al., 2018;
S tef
anescu, 2013; Rodrigues et al., 2017; Castilla-Polo et al., 2018; Yusoff et al., 2016; Ofoegbu
et al. (2018), Sankara et al. (2017); Braz and Lopes, 2018; Elfeky, 2017; Ruwini and
Nimalathasan, 2019) was measured by the total number of directors on the board.
Regarding the board independence, we used the number of non-executive directors
divided by the number of corporate board members (S  tef
anescu, 2013; Elmagrhi et al., 2016;
Castilla-Polo et al., 2018; Yusoff et al., 2016; Ofoegbu et al., 2018; Shahab, and Ye, 2018; Braz
and Lopes, 2018; Elfeky, 2017; Ruwini and Nimalathasan, 2019).
To test the influence of gender diversity, we used the percentage of women sitting on the
Board of Directors. This variable is measured as the ratio of the total number of female
directors to the total number of Board members (Castilla-Polo et al., 2018; Aribi et al., 2018;
Braz and Lopes, 2018; Ben-Amar et al., 2017; Yusoff et al., 2016).
With reference to duality, we adopted a dummy variable coded 1 if the CEO is the chairman
of the board of directors and 0 otherwise (Ruwini, and Nimalathasan, 2019; Castilla-Polo et al.,
2018; Shahab, and Ye, 2018; Braz and Lopes, 2018; Elfeky, 2017; Allergrini and Greco, 2013).
The frequency of meetings was measured by the number of meetings held per year
 tef
anescu, 2013; Yusoff et al., 2016; Sankara et al., 2017; Ofoegbu et al., 2018).
(S

3.4 Control variables

We introduced in our empirical models three firm-specific variables as the control variables
with the intention of enhancing the accuracy of predictions and the reliability of the
inference from the analysis. These factors are firm profitability, firm age and firm size.
Several studies that have determined the relationship between profitability and CG,
environmental and ethics disclosure provided mixed results. While some researchers
reported non-significant connection between profitability and voluntary CG disclosure
(Scholtz and Smit, 2015 and Al-Bassam et al., 2018) and environmental disclosure (Fakhari
and Pitenoei, 2017 and Welbecket al., 2017), others such us Welbeck (2017) and Aribi et al.
(2018) discovered that profitability is positively associated with environmental and ethics
disclosure. Similarly, Fakhari and Pitenoei (2017) argued that more profitable firms tend to
disclose more information to inform their investors of their appropriate performance,
leading to a reduction in information asymmetry. Similarly, Giannarakis et al. (2019) argued
that companies that are highly profitable are able to absorb the associated costs and hence
disclose more information to stakeholders.
SBR As firm age was calculated as the natural logarithm of the number of the listed years
(Fakhari and Pitenoei, 2017; Ling and Sultana, 2015), some prior studies demonstrated that
firm age is a good predictor of firms’ environmental disclosure practices (Welbeck et al.,
2017). Al-Bassam et al. (2018) and Sankara et al. (2017) reported an insignificant relationship
between firm age and voluntary disclosure about CG practices and corporate ethics behavior.
As firm size was measured by the natural logarithm of total assets (Shahab and Ye, 2018;
Ofoegbu et al., 2018), the majority of empirical studies has reported significant evidence that
there is a positive relation between company size and the level of CG disclosure (Cunha and
Mendes, 2016; Steenkamp et al., 2019) and social and environmental disclosure (Shahab and
Ye, 2018); Welbeck et al., 2017)).
Table 2 presents a detailed operationalization of the variables.

3.5 Research models

In this study, we aimed to identify possible associations between the board of directors’
features and the level of CG, environmental and ethics disclosure via annual reports for
French stock exchange companies belonging to the SBF 120 index. Accordingly, the
following three models have been identified:
Model 1
CGD ¼ b o þ b 1 BSize þ b 2 BInd þ b 3 BGender þ b 4 Dual þ b 5 BMeetings
þ B6 Control Variables «
Model 2
CED ¼ b o þ b 1 BSize þ b 2 BInd þ b 3 BGender þ b 4 Dual þ b 5 BMeetings
þ B6 Control Variables «
Model 3
C Ethics D ¼ b o þ b 1 BSize þ b 2 BInd þ b 3 BGender þ b 4 Dual þ b 5 BMeetings
þ B6 Control Variables «

4. Empirical findings and discussion

4.1 Descriptive statistics
Tables 3 and 4 provide the minimum, maximum, mean and the standard deviation of the
independent and dependent variables. Table 3 shows that the mean of the CGDI of the
sample during the period under study was 0.487 with the highest and lowest value of 0.813
and 0.047, respectively. The standard deviation statistic for the said variable is 0.124,
suggesting that CG disclosure among French companies varied. The disclosure on
environmental information is 0.416 on an average with minimum disclosures of 0.059 and

Initial sample 120

Financial and insurance firms (11)
Firms with insufficient data (27)
Final sample 82
Table I. Study duration 6
Sample selection Total observations 492
Variables Operationalization References
Impact of
P
board
Corporate governance ¼ ni¼1 quantity i=max quantity Scholtz and Smit, (2015); Elmagrhi characteristics
disclosure (CGDI) et al., (2016); Al-Bassam et al.,
Quantity i = 1 if item i is disclosed; 0 (2018)
Corporate environment otherwise Odoemelam and Okafor (2018),
disclosure (ENVD) MAX Quantity = maximum applicable Ofoegbu et al., (2018)
Voluntary ethical disclosure quantity score Othman et al., (2014)
disclosure (ETHD) n = number of items disclosed
Board size The total number of directors on the board Rodrigues et al., (2017)
Sankara et al., (2017)
Board independence The number of non-executive directors Elmagrhi et al., 2016; Ofoegbu
divided by the number of corporate board et al., (2018)
members Ruwini and Nimalathasan, 2019
Board gender The percentage of women sitting on the Aribi et al., (2018); Braz and Lopes,
Board of Directors 2018; Ben-Amar et al. (2017)
Duality 1 = Chairman and CEO roles are combined Castilla-Polo et al. (2018)
0 = Chairman and CEO roles are separated Shahab and Ye (2018)
Elfeky (2017)
Board meetings The number of meetings held per year Ofoegbu et al., (2018); Yusoff et al.
(2016) S tef
anescu (2013)
Firm profitability The return on equity (ROE) Hafsi and Turgut (2013), Fakhari
and Pitenoei (2017)
Firm age The natural logarithm of the number of Fakhari and Pitenoei (2017); Ling
listed year and Sultana, 2015 Table II.
Firm size The natural logarithm of total assets Shahab and Ye (2018), Ofoegbu Operationalization of
et al., (2018) the variables

Variables N Mean SD Minimum Maximum

CGDI 492 0.487 0.124 0.047 0.813

ENVD 492 0.416 0.138 0.059 0.726
Table III.
ETHD 492 0.384 0.146 0.063 0.634
Descriptive statistics
Notes: Corporate governance disclosure index (CGDI); Corporate environment disclosure index (ENVD); for dependent
Voluntary ethical disclosure (ETHD) variables

maximum of 0.726; moreover, the standard deviation is 0.138 and it shows a wide variety in
environmental disclosures. For ETHDI, the mean disclosure was 0.384 at a standard
deviation of 0.146 with the minimum and maximum value of 0.063 and 0.634, respectively.
Table 4 shows that the board size has an average value of 12.23 and it ranged between 6
and 22 with a standard deviation of 3.417. The average of board independence is found to be
0.587 with the maximum and minimum value of 0.15 and 1, respectively, and the standard
deviation is 0.207. The mean of board gender diversity is found to be 0.254 with the
maximum and minimum value of 0 and 0.575, respectively, and the standard deviation of
this parameter is 0.157. The mean of board meetings is 6 and it ranged between 4 and 14,
and the standard deviation for board meetings is reported to be 0.296. The mean of the firm
profitability is 0.052, while the maximum and minimum are 0.159 and 0.223, respectively,
with a standard deviation of 0.07. The mean of firm age is 57.26 and it ranged between 2 and
193 and the standard deviation for this variable was reported to be 49.86. Finally, the mean
SBR Variables N Mean Median SD Minimum Maximum

Part A : Continuous variables

BSize 492 12.23 12 3.417 6 22
BInd 492 0.587 0.476 0.207 0. 15 1
BGender 492 0.254 0.216 0.157 0 0.575
BMeetings 492 6 0.301 0.296 4 14
Prof 492 0.052 0.048 0.073 0.159 0.223
Age 492 57.26 42 49.86 2 193
Size 492 21.871 20.584 3.974 14.214 27.522

Part B: Binary variables

0 1
N frequency (%) frequency (%)
Table IV.
Dual 492 0.621 0.379
Descriptive statistics
for independent and Notes: BSize: Board size; Bind: Board independence; BGender: Board gender; Dual: Duality; BMeetings:
control variables Board meeting; Prof: Fim profitability; Age: Firm age

value for firm size was 21.871, and the standard deviation from this result was 3.974 with
minimum and maximum scores of 14.214 and 27.522, respectively.

4.2 Multivariate and regression analysis

4.2.1 Correlation analysis. Tabachnick and Fidell (2001) suggest that multicollinearity may
be a problem when the correlation between the independent variables are >0.90. Table V
shows that the correlation between the independent variables seems to indicate no severe
multicollinearity, and the variance inflation factor, as shown in Table V is less than two for
each variable, indicating that multicollinearity is not a severe problem (Johnston, 1984).
4.2.2 Endogeneity, autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity analysis. The results obtained
from linear regressions presented in Table VI. Prior to presenting the linear regression
results, it seems essential to verify the endogeneity of the model’s variables by applying the
Hausman test. The test indicates that all our equations show a chi-square significant at the 1
per cent level (p = 0.000). Moreover, we conducted autocorrelation test using the Durbin–
Watson test. A regression model is considered to have no correlation if the Durbin–Watson

N = 385 BSize Bind BGender Dual BMeetings Prof age Size Vif

BSize 1 1.11
Bind 0.114** 1 1.23
BGender 0.056 0.186** 1 1.41
Dual 0.137** 0.097 0.074 1 1.17
BMeetings 0.041 0.087 0.098 0.143 1 1.02
Table V. Prof 0.189** 0.124 0.007 0.107 0.158 1 1.19
Age 0.279** 0.098 0.104* 0.258 0.217*** 0.143* 1 1.56
Pearson correlation
SIZE 0.124* 0.036 0.047 0.179* 0.028 0.151* 0.147* 1 1.69
matrix of
independent Notes: BSize: Board size; Bind: Board independence; BGender: Board gender; Dual: Duality; BMeetings:
variables, VIF Board meeting; Prof: Fim profitability; Age: Firm age;SIZE: Firm size; Vif Variance inflation factor
values are between 2 and 2. Note that Durbin–Watson statistic indicates that no Impact of
correlation among the error particles of regression models’ is found. board
Moreover, we tested the heteroscedasticity in our empirical models. In this sense, the
Breusch–Pagan test is conducted. Breusch–Pagan results show a probability lower than the
characteristics
1 per cent threshold for all models, indicating that the models are heteroscedastic. Given this
type of an error structure, our regressions will be estimated by the Generalized Least
Squares method.
4.2.3 Regression analysis. Table VII shows the results of the regression analyses. All
three models are globally important because the Wald chi-squares have been found to be
significant at the level of 1 per cent. Generally, these results indicate the significant influence
of board characteristics on the companies’ CG, environmental and ethics disclosure. Thus,
we agree that the board of directors is an important determinant of disclosure policies;
moreover, it is responsible to handle and provide information to stakeholders not only for
purely financial but also for environmental, social and governance concerns.
As can be seen from Table VI and contrary to expectations, board size has an insignificant
positive relationship with both voluntary CG and ethics disclosure. This suggests that such
disclosures cannot be affected by the number of directors on the board. These results are
inconsistent with the results of Cunha and Lu~cia (2018), Elmagrhi et al. (2016), Al Bassam et al.
(2018) and Samaha et al. (2012) and confirms a positive and significant correlation between
board size and CG disclosure. Furthermore, it contradicts the studies arguing in favor of
smaller boards (S  tef
anescu, 2013; Ntim et al., 2015). Moreover, the above results on the
influence of board size on corporate ethics disclosure are consistent with the results reported by
Sankara et al., 2017 who reported a non-significant association between the board size and
ethical CSR disclosure. Otherwise, board size has been discovered to considerably influence
corporate environmental disclosure; contrary to expectations, it has a positive coefficient at 1

Model 1: CGDI Model 2: ENVD Model 3: ETHD

Significance Significance Significance
Independent variables Coefficient level Coefficient level Coefficient level

BSize 0.342 0.697 0.241*** 0.006 0.471 0.742

BInd 0.368*** 0.000 0.214* 0.074 0.146*** 0.004
BGender 0.173** 0.014 0.355*** 0.003 0.184*** 0.000
Dual 0.176 0.980 0.362 0.357 0.287 0.634
BMeetings 0.227** 0.021 0.295* 0.073 0.239** 0.045
Prof 0.142 0.140 0.255 0.112 0.0053 0.134
Age 0.857*** 0.000 0.789*** 0.000 0.638*** 0.000
SIZE 0.577 0.127 0.142** 0.037 0.628 0.222
Endogeneity test 18.74** 36.74*** 42.58***
Autocorrelation test 1.752 1.874 1.692
Heteroscedasticity 247.369*** 321.873*** 287.286***
test
Wald chi2 72.52*** 98.01*** 74.69***
Prob > chi2 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
Number of 492 492 492
observations

Notes: *, ** and *** denote significantly different from zero at 0.10, 0.05 and 0.01 thresholds, respectively.
Corporate governance disclosure index (CGDI). Corporate environment disclosure index (ENVD). Voluntary Table VI.
ethical disclosure(ETHD) BSize: Board size; Bind: Board independence; BGender: Board gender; Dual: GLS Regressions:
Duality; BMeetings: Board meeting; Prof: Fim profitability; Age: Firm age, SIZE: Firm size Total panel
SBR Model 1: CGDI Model 2: ENVD Model 3: ETHD
Variables Coef z-Statistic P > |z| Coef z-Statistic P > |z| Coef z-Statistic P > |z|

BSize 0,018 ,263 0,792 0,175 1,504 0,134 0,024 0,435 0,664
Bind 0,058 1,040 0,299 0,027 0,446 0,656 0,297 5,600 0,000***
BGender 0,236 4,231 0,000*** 0,158 2,615 0,009*** 0,257 4,831 0,000***
Dual 0,158 2,238 0,026** 0,083 1,085 0,279 0,147 2,185 0,030**
BMeetings 0,136 2,374 0,018** 0,122 1,976 0,049** 0,190 2,495 0,013**
Prof 0,232 2,906 0,004*** 0,118 1,366 0,173 0,061 1,376 0,170
Age 0,046 0,540 0,590 0,063 1,394 0,164 0,215 2,657 0,008***
SIZE 0,004 ,070 0,944 ,054 ,873 0,383 0,169 3,088 0,002***
Con ,322 ,874 0,723
Wald chi2(10) 57.12 Wald chi2(10) 109.07 Wald chi2(10) 112.42
Prob > chi2 (0.000) *** Prob > chi2 (0.000) *** Prob > chi2 (0.000) ***
Number of observation 328 Number of observation 328 Number of observation 328
BSize: Board size Dual: Duality Prof: Fim profitability
Bind: Board independence BMeetings; Board meeting Age: Firm age
BGender: Board gender SIZE: Firm size Voluntary ethical disclosure
Table VII. Corporate governance disclosure Corporate environment disclosure (ETHD)
Results before GRI- index; (CGDI). index; (ENVD).
G4/panel A (2012-
2015) Notes: ***significant at 1% level; **significant at 5% level; *significant at 10% level

per cent level of significance. Such a result indicates that companies with larger boards are
more likely to involve in increased disclosure of environmental information compared to those
with a smaller board. The argument is dependent on the fact that, in larger boards, there is
more chance that they include members who tend to favor the increase of voluntary disclosure
in the annual reports. Moreover, this result can be explained by the fact that the increase in the
number of directors strengthens the control of manager and may place more pressure on
corporate executives to enhance corporate legitimacy. This result is in line with the findings of
Jizi et al (2014), Akbas (2016), Trireksani and Djajadikerta (2016), Wang (2017), Liao et al. (2015),
Ezhilarasi and Kabra (2017), Tauringana and Chithambo (2015) and Osazuwa et al. (2016), but
inconsistent with Kantudu and Samaila (2015) who reported a negative significant association.
With regards to board independence, the three models showed a positive coefficient and
statistically significant relationship with CG, environmental and ethics disclosure (at 1 per
cent, 10 per cent and 1 per cent significant levels, respectively). Thus, our second hypothesis
is supported. These results show companies’ efforts to fulfill stakeholders’ demands for such
specific reporting. In particular, our results suggest the following implications. First,
companies with more independent outside directors engage in greater compliance with, and
disclosure of, CG practices, thus providing empirical support to the results of prior studies
(Cunha and Lu ~cia, 2018; Samaha et al., 2012; Mallin and Ow-Yong, 2012; S tef
anescu, 2013;
and Elmagrhi et al., 2016). Second, they are usually motivated to disclose more
environmental information to show off good reputation with their stakeholders. This result
is consistent with findings reported by Liao et al. (2015), Eberhardt-Toth (2017), Wang (2017)
and Giannarakis et al. (2019) and contradicts the results of Baalouch et al. (2019) conducted
in the French context and concluded that the presence of independent directors on the board
is significantly and negatively associated with the quality of environmental disclosure.
Third, our results suggest that outside directors may be more aware about the importance of
ethics disclosure, whereas such finding is inconsistent with Sankara et al. (2017) who
reported that board independence is negatively associated with corporate ethics disclosure.
 Confirming the third hypothesis (H3), board gender diversity is found to positively Impact of
impact on all three dependent variables. In fact, gender diversity shows a positive board
relationship at 5 per cent level of significance with CG disclosure and at 1 per cent level of
significance with both environmental and ethics disclosure, thus supporting the view that
characteristics
boards of diverse gender may place more pressure on corporate executives to involve in
good governance practices to attract resources from powerful stakeholders and improve the
capability of corporate board to monitor management activities more effectively and thereby
increase voluntary CG disclosure practices (Al Bassam et al., 2018; Elmagrhi et al., 2016;
Ntim and Soobaroyen, 2013). Furthermore, our results suggest that women show a more
responsible behavior concerning environmental disclosure to attract resources from
powerful stakeholders (Ben-Amar et al., 2017; Liao et al., 2015; Rupley et al., 2012; Liao et al.,
2015; Baalouch et al. (2019) and Giannarakis et al., 2019). Similarly, our results are consistent
with the results of Isidro and Sobral (2015) and Sankara et al. (2017), suggesting a positive
relationship between women on board and the firm’s compliance with their stated ethical
and social standards. Another possible explanation is that in France, the context of the
current study, the law requires 50 per cent gender parity on the board of every public firm
by 2015, which particularly reinforces the role of women on boards of directors in disclosure
policy (Baalouch et al., 2019).
The fourth hypothesis explores the relationship between CEO duality and CG and
environmental and ethics disclosure. The regression results show an insignificant, positive
coefficient in the three models; hence, the fourth hypothesis of our study is rejected. Thus,
our results are in accordance and reaffirm the results of previous literature such as the
studies of Parsa et al. (2007), Velayutham (2014) and Sankara et al. (2017) who reported that
CG, environmental and ethics disclosure cannot be affected by CEO duality.
In terms of the relationship between board meetings and our three dependent variables,
the coefficients have the positive expected sign in the three models; therefore, H5 is
accepted. According to Model 1, board meetings have been reported to be a predictor of CG
disclosure (statistically significant at 5 per cent with a positive coefficient of 0.021). This
confirms that an increase (decrease) in board meetings by 1 per cent will increase (decrease)
the CG disclosure score by 0.021 per cent. This result is consistent with the result of
S tef
anescu (2013). Moreover, the coefficient in the second model is significant at 10 per cent.
This result is in line with the findings of Giannarakis et al. (2019), but contradicts the results
of Osazuwa et al. (2016) who found a negative relationship between board meetings and
environmental disclosure in Nigeria and those in Ofoegbu et al. (2018) who found that this
variable does not significantly influence the extent of environmental disclosure of listed
firms in South Africa and Nigeria. Furthermore, the coefficient in the third model is
significant at a 5 per cent level, suggesting that with increase in board meetings, the
voluntary ethics disclosure is higher. This result is in line with those of Sankara et al. (2017);
hence, these results indicate that a greater number of meetings reduce possible problems of
information asymmetries because with more frequent meetings the supervisory and control
functions attributed to the board are more efficient and consequently companies will be
more motivated to disclose more information about their ethics in an attempt to gain
legitimacy.
Among the control variables, firm profitability, is reported to have an insignificant
relationship in the three models. In this regard, the sixth hypothesis (H6) is rejected. Thus,
no significant differences exist between profitable and unprofitable firms in terms of their
disclosure about CG, environment and ethics. Our results are consistent with those
of Scholtz and Smit (2015) and Al Bassam et al. (2018) who concluded that profitability of
companies is unrelated to the levels of CG disclosure and consistent with the study of
SBR Welbeck et al. (2017), which confirmed a significant association between firm profitability
and the level of environmental disclosure. However, our results contradict the findings of
Giannarakis et al. (2019), suggesting that larger firms are more likely to undertake
environmental disclosures and those of Aribi et al. (2018), showing that companies with high
profits are motivated to disclose more information about their ethics than those with small
profits.
For the relationship between firm age and the level of CG, environmental and ethics
disclosure, the results of this study demonstrate that age is a good predictor of such specific
disclosure practices in France. As shown in Table VI, age has positive coefficients and
statistically significant relationships (at 1 per cent significant level) with our dependent
variables. This indicates that older firms with longer periods of activity in the marketplace
and with great experience in collecting, processing and reporting information typically act
in a timely manner and disclose more transparent information to market activists than
relatively new firms. Indeed, cautious of their reputation, older firms may engage in
activities that position them as socially responsible entities. These results are inconsistent
with the results of Al Bassam et al. (2018) who reported a negative and insignificant
relationship between firm age and voluntary CG disclosure practices and contradicts the
results of Sankara et al. (2017), showing that ethics disclosure is not associated with the age
of the firm. However, the above result on the influence of firm age on environmental
disclosure is consistent with the results reported by Giannarakis et al. (2019); Fakhari and
Pitenoei (2017) and Welbeck et al. (2017) who argued that firm age is an important
determinant of its environmental disclosure practice.
Similarly, our results demonstrate that the estimated coefficient of firm size is not
significant in the first and third models, indicating this variable not affect CG and ethics
disclosure by companies of our sample. Such a result contradicts the results of Cunha and
Mendes (2016) and Steenkamp et al. (2019). In the second model, the estimated coefficient of
firm size is positive and significant at the level of 5 per cent, which is an indication that
larger firms disclose more environmental-related information than smaller firms. Such firms
may want to attract external funding and hence their willingness to make environmental
disclosures (Welbeck et al., 2017). According to the legitimacy theory, firms would bow to
such societal pressure and consequently disclose information on their environmental
activities in an attempt to gain legitimacy. Extant literature argues that larger firms are
more willing to disclose environmental information because of their visibility and the desire
to gain public confidence (Kamal and Deegan, 2013) and because of the wide media coverage
and more attention paid by market, lawmakers and market analysts to it (Fakhari and
Pitenoei, 2017).
4.2.4 Additional analyses. This study extends prior works by analyzing the impact of
some board characteristics on CG, environmental and ethics disclosure in France. To
measure these dimensions, we collected information from sustainable development reports
published by the companies. All the disclosures variables were manually collected by
analyzing annual reports and CG reports. The result may be influenced by the adoption of
the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI). In fact, the GRI guidelines cover all aspects of CSR
because they consider an economic, environmental and social perspective. Starting in 2015,
the French companies have become companies to file Business Responsibility Report to
enhance the quality of disclosures. Therefore, it is important to consider GRI’s guidelines in
the robustness of our results and rerun our regressions. A robustness estimation should be
made to examine the extent to which our key results are robust or sensitive to the use of the
standard methodology.
 GRI was founded in 1997; it is a long-term, international and multi-stakeholder initiative Impact of
whose objective is to build a reference framework for the establishment of societal reporting board
(governance, sustainable performance and ethics). Recently, in June 2013, GRI implemented
a new G4 version. In this area, the GRI first asks companies to have a social responsibility
characteristics
process, and more particularly the G4 insists on this notion of information’s’ relevance for
sustainable development reported by companies. However, GRI will continue to accept
reports based on the G3 and G3.1 guidelines for a maximum period of two years of full
reporting cycles. The reports published after December 31, 2015 should be prepared in
accordance with G4 guidelines (Global Reporting Initiative, 2013).
In this context, companies reporting through the guidelines may continue to use G3/G3.1
until December 31, 2015. Similarly, GRI has recommended that any organization producing
her first report use G4 Guidelines even if it does not satisfy the requirements of the
« compliance » options in her first reporting cycle (Global Reporting Initiative, GRI-G4)
guidelines have published since 2013 to apply in the preparation of the sustainable reporting
Initiative.
Moreover, it is interesting to test the sensitivity of our results to the compliance of the G4
guidelines. We will estimate the equations during the optional period of GRI4 (2012-2015)
and after the mandatory adoption of GRI4 (2016-2017). More particularly, we used a panel of
data separate into two sub-periods (Table VII and VIII). The first is before the adoption of
GRI-G4 (from 2012 to 2015) and the second one includes the post Mandatory GRI-G4 (from
2016 to 2017).
Our results show that French companies have the interest to consider the societal
dimensions in their activities. The adoption of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI, G4) has not
affected or biased the CG, environmental and ethics disclosure.
Board gender diversity provides a high level of CG, environmental and ethics disclosure
(Table VIII). This positive effect is noticed in the case of board meetings and board
independence (Table VIII). Our results confirm the importance of board of directors in the
disclosure sustainability report.

Model 1: CGDI Model 2: ENVD Model 3: ETHD

Variables Coef z-Statistic P > |z| Coef z-Statistic P > |z| Coef z-Statistic P > |z|

BSize 1,312 6,116 0,000*** 0,403 1,502 0,135 0,124 0,580 0,563
Bind 0,148 1,944 0,054* ,424 4,452 0,000*** 0,156 2,054 0,042**
BGender 0,349 4,676 0,000*** 0,186 1,948 0,053* 0,552 7,220 0,000***
Dual 0,535 3,995 0,000*** 0,428 2,367 0,019** ,063 0,974 0,332
BMeetings 0,439 6,209 0,000*** 0,602 5,745 0,000*** 0,211 2,932 0,004***
Prof 0,077 1,150 0,252 0,110 0,760 0,448 0,134 1,155 0,250
Age 1,191 8,239 0,000*** 0,428 2,367 0,019** 0,086 0,599 0,550
SIZE 0,137 2,205 0,029** 0,135 1,732 0,085* 0,194 2,817 0,005***
Con 0,874 0,682 0,336
Wald chi2(10) 79.40 Wald chi2(10) 79.29 Wald chi2(10) 82.17
Prob > chi2 (0.000) *** Prob > chi2 (0.000) *** Prob > chi2 (0.000) ***
Number of observation 164 Number of observation 164 Number of observation 164
BSize: Board size Dual: Duality SIZE: Firm size
Bind: Board independence BMeetings; Board meeting; Age: Firm age
BGender: Board gender Prof: Fim profitability Voluntary ethical disclosure
Corporate governance disclosure index; Corporate environment disclosure (ETHD)
(CGDI). index; (ENVD). Table VIII.
Results after GRI-G4/
Notes: ***Significant at 1% level; **significant at 5% level; *significant at 10% level panel B (2016-2017)
SBR 5. Conclusion
This study investigated the relationship between some board characteristics, namely, board
size, board independence, gender diversity, CEO duality and board meetings and the level of
CG disclosure, as well as environmental and ethics disclosure. Our analyses focused on a
final sample of 385 firm-year observations belonging to SBF 120 index (French stock
exchange companies) over the 2012-2017 period. Our results show that board size has no
significant relationship with both CG and ethics disclosure; however, it is positively
associated with only the level of environmental disclosure. Thus, board size contributes to
the enhancement of environmental reporting. This study recommends that the French
corporate should consider enlarging the size of its board and increasing the number of
independent directors and the number of women on the board and the number of board
meetings held per year because these will contribute to improving corporate disclosure and
consequently reduce information asymmetry, which not only clarifies the conflicts of
interests between shareholders and management but also makes management more
accountable.
Our study comes to add value to CG literature through the three disclosure indexes
developed. Moreover, we had the chance to enrich the research literature with this empirical
study, focusing during the optional period of GRI4 and after the mandatory adoption of GRI4.
The findings of this study have significant implications that could be valuable to
different stakeholders and policy-makers and regulatory bodies interested in improving CG
initiatives to reduce agency costs and enhance corporate transparency because it
recommends thinking about implementing a generally accepted framework of non-financial
reporting to answer the demand for more transparency and accountability. This study has
some limitations that could be addressed in future research studies. Our sample is relatively
small; therefore, it would be interesting to extend it to cover all the listed French companies
and study the unlisted ones. Future studies may include both external and internal CG
mechanisms. Moreover, we suggest studying other board characteristics such as ethnicity,
age, experience and tenure. Finally, we suggest studying whether there is an impact of the
adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on CG, environmental
and ethics disclosure.

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Further reading
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About the authors

Hanen khaireddine is a Doctor in Accounting from Sfax University. Her main research interests are
related to corporate governance, environmental audit, earnings management and reporting.
Bassem Salhi is s an Associate Professor of Accounting and Control at College of Business
Administration, Majmaah University.
Jabr Al-Jabr is a head of the accounting department at the College of Business Administration.
Anis Jarboui is full Professor of Finance and has published on topics of financial management,
CSR, Governance. Anis Jarboui is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: anisjarboui@
yahoo.fr

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