AcademicArticleSCO_85040903333

abstract

• © 2018 Elsevier Inc. We examine the effect of board structure on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure in Latin America. Previous studies have presented diverse results, but Latin American companies are rarely studied. We argue that the institutional context of Latin America should change some of the relationships between board structure and ESG disclosure ordinarily observed in the literature. We tested our hypotheses about the influence of board size, women on the board, CEO duality, and independent directors, on ESG disclosure using a four-year panel collected from the Bloomberg and Capital IQ databases. We found that board size and independent directors impact ESG disclosure positively, but women on the board and CEO duality impact ESG disclosure negatively. These findings provide new insights into ESG disclosure in Latin America.