**3.3. Practice of separation between the chief executive officer and chairman of the board and environmental reporting**

Role of CEO has been incorporated as one of the significant factor influencing the corporate environmental and social reporting by Adams [56]. It is believed that the "CEO duality" or "dominant personality phenomenon", i.e. the positions of CEO and the chairman held by the same person can lessen the efficiency of the board in screening the management activities [10, 57]. The 2013 Corporate Governance Code released by the SECP also recommends the separate role between the CEO and chairman of the board. The authors in [42, 58, 59] proposed discrete leadership structure on the basis of agency theory. Hence, it could be assumed that the board independence attained by separate leadership framework will direct to a better and effective environmental and social reporting about the companies, thus protecting interest of the shareholders.

The literature shows contrary results with regard to the practice of separation between the executive manager and the chairman of the board and the level of reporting. Furthermore, the authors in [9, 19, 60] found no substantial association between the separate leadership structure and the level of reporting. Florackis and Ozkan [50] argued that the dual role endorses CEO entrenchment by decreasing monitoring efficacy of board. Haniffa and Cooke [10] found that role duality is linked with lesser voluntary disclosure. Consistent with the arguments, the authors in [17, 45, 52, 61] found a positive association between disclosure and separate leadership framework. Finally, it is anticipated that separate leadership structure will enhance the extent of environmental reporting by the firm:

**H3** :*The level of environmental reporting is positively related to the practice of separation between the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and chairman of the board.*
