The relationship between corporate governance and corporate social behavior: a structural equation model analysis

This paper extends previous research in corporate social responsibility from a corporate governance perspective. Through a two‐step procedure, this research develops a measurement model to measure the unobservable variable of social sensibility of corporate governance (SSCG) and tests empirically the effect of this variable on corporate social behavior using a structural model. Both models are estimated applying Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) and Bayesian methods for the 125 listed companies of the Spanish Continuous Stock Market. Two important conclusions are obtained of this research: first, a firm's SSCG can be measured through two different factors (the independence and pluralism of Boards and the ownership power), and second, there is a direct relationship between the firm's social sensibility of corporate governance and its social behavior.