Effect of board gender diversity on corporate social responsibilty activities: Turkey 500 research

This study examines the direct impact of board gender, nationality and independence divesity on the corporate social responsibility activities and the moderator effect of education and age on the relation between gender diversity and corporate social responsibility. It also controls companies' sector and size which are considered to have an impact on corporate social responsibility activities. In this context, the study suggests a new instrument for measuring corporate social responsibility performance and applies a content analysis to annual reports of companies listed in 2015's Turkey 500 list. The data obtained is subjected to hierarchical regression analysis to test the study's hypothesis in the context of the study model. Findings shows an association between board independence diversity and corporate social responsibility performance but no association between board gender and nationality diversity and corporate social responsibility performance. The effect of education and age on the gender diversity is statistically non-significant.