Unlocking sustainable disclosure: The gender diversity effect on corporate governance, human capital, and SSCM

Abstract

The aim of this study is to look into the effects of board gender diversity on the relationships among Corporate Governance Mechanisms, Human Capital, and Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) disclosure after the MCCG 2017 was implemented. The study extracted information from Bursa Malaysia’s annual reports from 2018 to 2020. The top 100 public listed companies (based on market capitalization) constituted as samples. The study employed the SSCM checklist to construct the disclosure index, which encompassed twelve (12) themes and used an unweighted disclosure index of SSCM that considered 60 discretionary items. The Statistical Package STATA 17 was applied in the current study to synthesize and test all the hypotheses. The study's findings showed that board size, audit committee independence, directors’ remuneration, and board meeting frequency all had positive relationships with SSCM disclosure. The study's findings revealed that board gender diversity moderated the relationships among board size, directors’ remuneration, board meeting frequency, and SSCM disclosure. The findings of the study suggests that when aiming to promote SSCM performance, which is required to achieve SDG 12, government regulators should emphasize the impact of effective governance features and sustainability-related initiatives.