Influence of sustainability applications on corporate governance structures of businesses: An implementation on ISE (İstanbul Stock Exchange)

The study aims to observe influence of sustainability on corporate governance structures of businesses. To observe it we have examined relationship between sustainability and corporate governance. First section include literature review about sustainability as meaning of the term, historical background, its importance and dimensions of sustainability. At next stage of literature review we have collected information about organisations which are supporting sustainability disclosure (reporting). We have observed that the most prefered organisation is Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and we have collected information about its manual (guildline) for sustainability reporting. Second section of our study include literature review about corporate governance, as meaning of this term, theories and principles of the term. We have examined foreign and turkish studies which were investigating relationship between sustainability and corporate governance. Based on this literature review in the third part of our study we have chose 17 businesses (companies) which were registered at İstanbul Stock Exchange between the 2013-2016 years and also prepared sustainability reports for this period of time. We have collected information from financial and sustainability reports and created 68 data sets. For analysis of relationship between corporate governance and sustainability of turkish companies we have used "balanced panel analysis" type. For our data sets as sustanability applications we used sustainability reports prepared according to the GRI standarts. And as corporate governance applications we have used specifications of company board structure like: size, presence of independent and community influential board members, ceo duality and presence of corporate social responsibility committee. We have added to our data sets company size and profitability of the company as control variables which can effect on sustainability applications. In results of our investigation we observed that presence of community influential board members and profitability of the company are positive (increasing) factors on sustainability applications. Board Size, presence of independent board members and presence corporate social responsibility committee are negative (decreasing) factors on sustainability applications. Keywords: Sustainability, Sustainability Reporting, Corporate Governance