Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility: Revisiting Their Inter-relationship

With a surge in social, environmental, and corporate governance (ESG) awareness and related misbehaviors, the interplay between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming more important than ever. Theoretically, one strand of CG-CSR research establishes mechanisms and processes through which CG drives CSR practices and their disclosures. Concomitantly, another strand of the literature argues that socially responsible firms are also well governed at the upper echelon level. The emergence of best practices on responsible governance and of frameworks that subsume both corporate responsibility and CG (such as ESG) reinforces the need to explore and study more deeply the inter-relationships between these domains. This chapter provides an overview of the inter-relationship between CG and CSR situated in the mainstream business, governance, and ethics outlets. Based on our review insights, our final section chalks out a comprehensive future research agenda, rethinking academic and policy research at this critical intersection.