Board demographic diversity and human rights reporting in Western Europe

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the relationship between board demographic diversity and human rights reporting for a sample of large Western European companies. Design/methodology/approach - Grounded on resource dependence theory, the authors hypothesize that greater gender, age and nationality diversities will translate into enhanced levels of human rights reporting. The authors use ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyze the association between these types of board diversity and such reporting. Findings - The findings suggest that the companies in the sample attribute little importance to the reporting of information pertaining to the issue of human rights. They also suggest that only the diversity of nations represented in the board of directors is significant in explaining this type of reporting. Research limitations/implications - The sample includes only large companies from Western Europe and the analysis covers only one year. Originality/value - To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first empirical analysis of factors influencing human rights reporting conducted on a multiple-country setting. It is also the first investigating the association between boards of directors’ demographic diversity and such reporting.