Corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and corporate performance

Previous research has analyzed and debated corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) independently. This paper aims to empirically explore the interrelationship between CG, CSR, financial performance (FP) and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) using a sample of 297 electronics companies operating in Taiwan, a newly industrialized Asian economy. The results show that a CG model which includes independent outside directors and which has specific ownership characteristics has a significantly positive impact on both FP and CSP, whereas FP itself does not influence CSP. The presence of independent outside directors in the firm has the greatest impact on the social performance of the firm's worker, customer, supplier, community and society dimensions. Government shareholders enhance a firm's social performance extraordinarily because government shareholders will be more likely to request that companies fulfill their social responsibilities. Only government shareholders positively and significantly relate to a firm's environmental performance. Furthermore, foreign institutional stockholders help to increase worker and supplier performance by paying more attention to employee policies and supply chain relationships. Finally, independent outside directors, foreign institutional stockholders and domestic financial institutional stockholders are shown to improve financial performance.