Business Group,Vertical Interlock And Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

Vertical interlock is a common phenomenon,which means a chairman of listed companies in a business group is also the top manager of the business group.Based on the sample of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2015,this paper analyzes the influence of vertical interlock on the disclosure of social responsibility information from the perspectives of resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory.Besides,this paper also discusses the impact of ownership from the perspective of the distribution of resources.Also,the differences brought by vertical interlock under different ownership systems are also discussed.In addition,this paper also analyzes the impact of interlock position with the difference of resource accessibility.We find that companies in business group tend to disclose corporate social responsibility information but companies in state-owned business groups are not significantly care about it.On the other hand,vertical interlock will hinder the disclosure of corporate social responsibility and impact the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure.However,the relationship described above can only be observed in state-owned companies because the resource of state-owned business groups concentrates in the groups while other business groups almost concentrate their resource in the listed company.Also,we find that a higher position of interlocked director in a stated-owned business group will lead to a lower desire to disclose corporate social responsibility because the higher position means the stronger ability to acquire intra-group resources.Based on the results,it is proposed that state-owned business groups should pay attention to the negative impact of resource concentration on the social responsibility disclosure,and pay more attention to the influence of vertical interlock on the resource acquisition.Also,voluntary social responsibility disclosure of state-owned companies with vertical interlock can be improved by raising the disclosure requirements during resources acquisition.