Corporate Social Performance: The Effects of Ownership Concentration, Board Size and Chairman Age

Abstract

This thesis treats corporate social performance as an end in itself rather than as only a means to achieve the end of better financial performance. I integrate agency theory, resource dependence theory and stakeholder salience theory as the theoretical frameworks for the determinants of corporate social performance and in the hypothesis development on the effects of ownership concentration, board size and chairman’s age on corporate social performance. The results of the empirical analysis show that corporate social performance is positively and significantly associated with board size and that ownership concentration moderates the significant associations between corporate social performance and the chairman’s age. That is, in the absence of ownership concentration, corporate social performance is positively and significantly associated with the chairman’s age. In the presence of ownership concentration, corporate social performance is negatively and significantly associated with the chairman’s age. This thesis not only finds evidence that the board size and the chairman’s age are determinants of corporate social performance, it also finds support for the view that the board has both a monitoring and a resource provision function and that the board’s performance of these two functions is moderated by ownership concentration.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Sidney C M LEUNG (Supervisor)