Isabel-María García-Sánchez

Bio: Isabel-María García-Sánchez is an academic researcher from University of Salamanca. The author has contributed to research in topics: Corporate social responsibility & Corporate governance. The author has an hindex of 42, co-authored 160 publications receiving 6747 citations. Previous affiliations of Isabel-María García-Sánchez include University of Granada.

The Role of the Board in the Dissemination of Integrated Corporate Social Reporting

Abstract: The stakeholder theory recognizes that, besides shareholders and creditors, there exists a broad range of agents who are interested in companies' attitudes towards sustainability. Through corporate social reporting, the social and environmental effects of companies' economic actions are communicated to interest groups. However, the information contained in financial and social reports tends to be presented quite separately from that in the others, and this may lead to confusion among users. Therefore, several major companies have introduced an integrated reporting system, which coherently summarizes the information available, thus making stakeholders participants in business management. Corporate governance mechanisms such as the Board of Directors play an important role in good practices of corporate social responsibility, implementing policies of stakeholder engagement, including processes to achieve holistic transparency. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the influence played by certain features of the Board of Directors in the degree of information integration presented by leading non-financial multinational firms. Specifically, we examined 568 companies from 15 countries, for the period 2008–2010. The results obtained show that growth opportunities, the size of a company and its management bodies, together with gender diversity, are the most important factors in the integrated dissemination of information. This effect has been confirmed for the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Latin models of corporate governance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The Role of the Board of Directors in Disseminating Relevant Information on Greenhouse Gases

Abstract: In today’s world, the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic, specifically, on climate change. Since the Board of Directors is the body responsible for this process, the aim of this article is to show the role that companies’ Boards of Directors play in the accountability process vis-a-vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental information: practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this, we shall verify certain business characteristics, in addition to the size and activity of the Board of Directors, and we shall take different dependence models into consideration. These models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the Board of Directors, which interact with dummy variables representing the company’s litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro-context of the organization’s country of origin. The results make it clear that Boards of Directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value, instead of dealing with today’s broader business world concepts, which include social responsibility. This focus, therefore, does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders, if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders.

Explanatory Factors of Integrated Sustainability and Financial Reporting

Abstract: The complexity of the business world has led to growing demands being made of companies regarding the information provided on their financial performance, corporate governance and contribution to developing sustainability. In response, some leading companies have begun to publish integrated reporting, in the form of a document providing a coherent summary of this information, thus facilitating stakeholder engagement. This paper examines the validity of the hypotheses of the theories of agency and of signalling, and analyses the political costs and those borne by owners in voluntarily developing this new type of business document. More specifically, in order to determine their prevalence among the suggested reasons for these paradigms, we analyse the effect of industry concentration, together with other factors, in the development of integrated reporting. The analysis of a non-balanced sample of 1590 international companies for the years 2008–2010, in which a logistic regression methodology is applied to panel data, reveals the negative impact of industry concentration on the development of a more pluralist report, simultaneously taking into account stakeholders, sustainability and the long-term viewpoint, as well as questions of responsible investment, business ethics and transparency. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Board diversity and its effects on bank performance: An international analysis

Abstract: This study analyses the effect of board diversity (gender and nationality) on performance in banks. By making use of a sample of 159 banks in nine countries during the period 2004–2010, our empirical evidence shows that gender diversity increases bank performance, while national diversity inhibits it. Complementarily, according to their institutional characteristics, we also show the moderating effect of investor protection and bank regulatory regime on this previous relationship, analysing their substitution or complementary roles. Our results also suggest that these institutional factors play a significant role in these effects. They show that in contexts of weaker regulatory and lower investor protection environments, board diversity has less influence on the performance of banks.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.