Environmental Legitimacy,Green Innovation,and Corporate Carbon Disclosure: Evidence from CDP China 100

Firms worldwide are increasingly required to disclose (and make efforts to reduce) their carbon emissions due to the environmental damage associated with climate change. Because there has been no previous literature focusing on the determinants of corporate carbon disclosure integrating environmental legitimacy and green innovation, the present study attempted to develop an original framework to fill the research gap. This study explored the influence of environmental legitimacy (an external informal mechanism) on corporate carbon disclosure, and investigated the role of green innovation (an internal formal mechanism) as a mediator. With the samples of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in China from 2008 to 2012, the results demonstrate that environmental legitimacy significantly negatively influences the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, and that green process innovation mediates the relationship, while green product innovation has no significant mediating effect. It means that environmental legitimacy not only directly affects the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, but also indirectly affects it via green process innovation. Hence, companies must increase both informal and formal mechanisms, i.e., external environmental legitimacy and internal green process innovation, to engage in carbon information disclosure and ensure sustainability.     

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

We examine the relationship between corporate governance and the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the annual reports of Bangladeshi companies. A legitimacy theory framework is adopted to understand the extent to which corporate governance characteristics, such as managerial ownership, public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence, CEO duality and presence of audit committee influence organisational response to various stakeholder groups. Our results suggest that although CSR disclosures generally have a negative association with managerial ownership, such relationship becomes significant and positive for export-oriented industries. We also find public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence and presence of audit committee to have positive significant impacts on CSR disclosures. However, we fail to find any significant impact of CEO duality. Thus, our results suggest that pressures exerted by external stakeholder groups and corporate governance mechanisms involving independent outsiders may allay some concerns relating to family influence on CSR disclosure practices. Overall, our study implies that corporate governance attributes play a vital role in ensuring organisational legitimacy through CSR disclosures. The findings of our study should be of interest to regulators and policy makers in countries which share similar corporate ownership and regulatory structures.     

CEO personality and language use in CSR reporting

We explore the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) personality traits and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Upper echelons theory indicates that the values, experiences, and personalities of top organizational managers influence their organization's strategic decisions and effectiveness. We utilize IBM Watson Personality Insights software to infer CEOs’ personality traits based on their responses to questions raised by analysts during year-end conference calls; we obtain CEOs’ Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—from which we compute a measure of their risk tolerance. Using a longitudinal dataset of Standard and Poor's 500 firms for 2008–2015, we document that high CEO risk tolerance is related to lower CSR report readability and smaller CSR disclosure volume. This finding indicates that executives who are comfortable with greater risk are more willing to supply stakeholders with reports that are shorter and require greater effort to understand. Exploration of the association between CEO Big Five personality traits and CSR report readability and disclosure volume allows key stakeholders to better comprehend CSR disclosures and connotations thereof. Overall, our results contribute to the debate on how CEO personality traits affect organizations’ CSR disclosure reporting strategies, and support upper echelons theory in the CSR setting.     

Impression management tactics in the CEO statements of Turkish sustainability reports

In this study, we construct a classificatory scheme of impression management tactics and apply it to a sample of sustainability report and annual report CEO statements issued by large Turkish companies. We find a wide range of impression management tactics applied in both types of CEO statements. However, impression management in sustainability report CEO statements emerges as more limited and uniform, revealing clearer prioritizations of impression management tactics when compared to annual report CEO statements. Sustainability report CEO statements emphasize tactics that allow the company to highlight carefully selected, isolated aspects of their sustainability engagement. At the same time, they rarely employ tactics that are geared towards more systematic (quantitative) performance evaluation. We attribute these differences to the way in which corporate sustainability performance is commonly conceptualized and evaluated, emphasising qualitative performance dimensions rather than the reporting of quantitative performance metrics. This results in the application of a different impression management tactics mix and limits the usefulness of sustainability reports as an accountability mechanism when compared to corporate annual reports. In addition, we provide tentative evidence for the context-specific nature of impression management, with the choice of impression management tactics reflecting the institutional environment a company is based in.     

Firm performance,corporate ownership,and corporate social responsibility disclosure in China

The existing literature provides conflicting results on the association between firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. This paper empirically examines the effect of firm performance on CSR disclosure in terms of disclosure frequency and quality among Chinese listed firms and the possible mediating effect of corporate ownership on the relationship between firm performance and CSR disclosure. Our findings show that better‐performing firms are more likely than worse‐performing ones to disclose CSR information and to produce higher quality CSR reports. In addition, the link between firm performance and CSR disclosure is found to be weaker among state‐owned enterprises compared with non‐state‐owned ones.     

Executive Compensation and Corporate Fraud in China

This study investigates the relation between CEO compensation and corporate fraud in China. We document a significantly negative correlation between CEO compensation and corporate fraud using data on publicly traded firms between 2005 and 2010. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that firms penalize CEOs for fraud by lowering their pay. We also find that CEO compensation is lower in firms that commit more severe frauds. Panel data fixed effects and propensity score methods are used to demonstrate these effects. Our results also indicate that corporate governance mechanisms influence the magnitude of punishment. We find that CEOs of privately controlled firms, firms that split the posts of CEO and chairman, and CEOs of firms located in developed regions suffer larger compensation penalties for committing financial fraud. Finally, we show that CEOs at firms that commit fraud are more likely to be replaced compared to those at non-fraud firms.     

The value relevance of SAM's corporate sustainability ranking and GRI sustainability reporting in the European stock markets

This paper investigates whether relative corporate sustainability as measured by the SAM sustainability ranking and sustainability reporting in terms of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) application levels are associated with a higher market valuation. We conduct a value relevance study for the 600 largest European companies with the Feltham and Ohlson valuation model as a reference point. Our results indicate that for the observation period 2001 to 2011, the association between corporate sustainability and market value is positive. The empirical evidence of a positive relationship between GRI reporting and market value is statistically significant in some but not all of the model specifications. We find no evidence of interaction between the value relevance of corporate sustainability and sustainability reporting, nor do we find any positive effect of external assurance on the capital market perception of GRI application levels. Our results support the notion that conducting business in accordance with ethical norms is also a shareholder value‐increasing business strategy. However, it is not possible to verify the information given in sustainability reports through external assurance.     

Coming Clean: The Impact of Environmental Performance and Visibility on Corporate Climate Change Disclosure

Previous research provides mixed results on the relationship between corporate environmental performance and the level of voluntary environmental disclosure. We revisit this relation by testing competing predictions from defensive and accommodative approaches to voluntary disclosure with regard to climate change. In particular, we add to the prior literature by determining the extent to which environmental performance and company media visibility interact to prompt voluntary climate change disclosure. Using ordinal regression and Ceres, KLD, and Trucost ratings of S&P 500 companies, we find a positive relationship between environmental performance and voluntary climate change disclosure. We extend the literature on environmental strategies and disclosure by establishing that company visibility and issue (climate change) visibility interact with environmental perfor- mance to influence the level of voluntary climate change disclosure.     

Does context matter for sustainability disclosure? Institutional factors in Southeast Asia

Corporate sustainability is a dynamic, socially constructed concept. Relatedly, to understand the variations in the disclosure of corporate sustainability activities across countries, we need to inherently explore their underlying sociopolitical contexts. At present our understanding in this regard, is deficient. We respond to this extant research gap by adopting a multi‐country approach to investigate the relationship between countries' institutional environments and firms' sustainability disclosure (SD) practices, across six countries in the Southeast Asian region. Our findings reflect a common focus of Southeast Asian firms on community and human resources (HRs) related disclosures. Nevertheless, nuanced differences in their overall SD levels confirm the influence of differing legal, normative, and sociocultural systems in engendering greater disclosure and transparency at a national level. By quantifying the institutional environment and identifying external influencing factors, our study provides a useful framework grounded in neo‐institutional theory to widen the existing understanding of how institutional pressures can be measured and compared across different contexts.     

Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability

Strategic leadership and corporate sustainability have recently come together in conspicuously explicit fashion through the emergence of top management team (TMT) positions with dedicated corporate sustainability responsibilities. These TMT positions, commonly referred to as “Chief Sustainability Officers,” have found their way into the upper echelons of many of the world’s largest corporations alongside more traditional TMT positions including the CEO and CFO. We explore this phenomenon and consider the following two questions: Why are corporate sustainability positions being installed to the TMT? What effects do corporate sustainability TMT positions have at their organizations? We consider these questions through strategic leadership and neoinstitutional theoretical frameworks. Through the latter, we also engage with Weberian considerations of bureaucracy. We find that the reasons why corporate sustainability TMT positions are installed can be in response to a crisis at the corporation for which its legitimacy is challenged. We also find the corporate sustainability TMT position can be installed proactively in an effort to realize external opportunities that may have otherwise gone unrealized without concerted attention and coordination afforded by a strategic level position. Regarding effects, we determine the position can relate to the establishment of bureaucratic structures dedicated to corporate sustainability within the corporation through which formalized processes and key performance indicators to drive corporate sustainability performances are established. In the face of our finding that many corporate sustainability TMT positions are being removed despite having only relatively recently been introduced to their respective TMTs, we find that the successful implementation of bureaucratic machinery can help considerations to sustainability extend beyond the tenure of a corporate sustainability position within the TMT.     

Corporate diversification and CEO turnover in family businesses: self-entrenchment or risk reduction?

Our study investigates differences in CEO turnover between focused and diversified firms to determine whether diversification strategies are necessarily associated with governance efficiency in family businesses. We find that large family CEO firms are more likely to engage in corporate diversification than are small non-family CEO firms and their CEOs are seldom replaced. Large family CEO diversified firms also have lower turnover sensitivity relative to focused firms. The results imply that the CEOs of diversified firms have entrenched themselves, thereby increasing agency costs within family businesses. However, we fail to find diversification discounts in family businesses. It is interesting that CEOs tend to diversify their businesses in order to decrease firm risk. Founding families favor risk-reducing decisions in order to maintain family wealth and prestige; suggesting that family businesses are more interested in survival than growth. Although family businesses may benefit from risk reduction, a negative relationship between diversification level and CEO turnover is still evidence of poor corporate governance. Agency theory may not completely account for the adoption of diversification strategies in family businesses and corporate diversification may weaken the effectiveness of internal monitoring mechanisms.

The role of CSR committee characteristics on R&D investments

We investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees on research and development (R&D) investments. Using a unique sample of European listed companies, we offer three key results to the current academic and policy debate. First, we document that firms with a CSR committee exhibit lower levels of R&D investments. Second, we find that the CSR committee membership of either the CEO or chairman is associated with an increase in R&D investments. Finally, we provide evidence that firms whose CSR committees are chaired by a female director exhibit higher R&D investments. These results are of importance for academics, investors, and policy makers, since they shed light on the effect of CSR board committees on corporate outcomes, beyond their impact on social performance and/or sustainability disclosure.     

Power and responsibility: How different sources of CEO power affect firms' corporate social responsibility practices

Does greater CEO power come with more responsibility? Previous scholarly work in this field entails divergent results on this question. Based on the upper echelons theory and CEO power literature, this study aimed to explore the mechanisms underlying how different sources of CEO power, including structural, ownership, expert, and prestige power, affect firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and whether such relationships are moderated by firm visibility. Using a panel dataset comprising 6604 yearly observations of Chinese publicly traded firms from 2009 to 2019, we found that structural power is negatively related to CSR practices and that expert power is positively related to CSR practices, whereas ownership power and prestige power have no direct relationship with CSR practices. Our results show that firm visibility weakens the negative relationship between structural power and CSR practices and strengthens the relationship between expert power and CSR practices, respectively. Overall, this study reconciles the mixed results of previous studies on the impact of CEO power on CSR and integrates the effect of firm visibility as a contextual factor. This article concludes with practical recommendations on how to manage CSR engagement.     

产品市场竞争对企业水信息披露的影响研究——基于2010-2016年中国高水敏感性行业的经验证据

面对日益严格的水监控,企业应如何调整竞争战略以适应竞争与政策呢？基于2010—2016年中国高水敏感性行业300家上市企业的面板数据,文章采用Tobit模型实证检验了产品市场竞争（行业竞争强度与企业市场势力）对企业水信息披露的影响机理。结果表明：行业竞争强度与企业水信息披露呈倒U型相关;温和竞争行业内最高市场势力的企业能够起到行业标杆作用,更愿意主动披露水信息;在进一步分析中,发现国有制身份强化了产品市场竞争（行业竞争强度与企业市场势力）对企业水信息披露的影响。文章丰富了产品市场竞争与环境信息披露的研究文献,为市场竞争能否促进环保责任的履行提供了经验证据,并对相关政府部门引导企业正视水问题具有重要指导意义。     

Corporate social responsibility disclosure and market value: Family versus nonfamily firms

We investigate the moderating role of family involvement in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting and firm market value using a longitudinal archival data set in the French context. Our empirical results show that family firms report less information on their CSR duties than do nonfamily firms. However, market-based financial performance, as measured by Tobin's q, is positively related to CSR disclosure for family firms and negatively related to CSR disclosure for nonfamily firms. Family firms would benefit greatly from communicating commitment to CSR; specifically, they could obtain shareholders' endorsement more easily than nonfamily firms could.     

Corporate governance and firm performance in Russia: an empirical study

Using the agency and institutional perspectives, this study advances several hypotheses about the board structure–firm performance relationship within Russia. We tested these hypotheses using survey data. Despite a relatively small sample size, predictions from both theoretical perspectives were supported. Specifically, we found a negative relationship between “informal” CEO duality and firm performance. This finding is noteworthy given the 1996 Russian Federal law which prohibits the CEO from also serving as board chair. Also, we found that the more vigorously the firm pursues a retrenchment strategy, the more negative the relationship between proportion of inside directors and firm performance. Overall, these findings suggest that effective corporate governance may be essential to firm performance in Russia.     

The impact of managerial ability on crisis-period corporate investment

In this study, we document a strong positive relation between pre-crisis managerial ability and corporate investment during the crisis period, which remains robust in the presence of a large array of control variables capturing corporate governance attributes, executive compensation incentives and CEO characteristics. This relationship was prevalent only among firms with CEOs that had general managerial skills, rather than firm-specific skills. Our results also show that the positive relationship between managerial ability and corporate investment was supported by the capacity of such firms to secure greater financing and be less vulnerable to financial constraints during the crisis. Finally, we find that, on average, the stock market evaluates crisis-period investments positively, yet this effect is evident solely among firms characterized by high pre-crisis managerial ability. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that high managerial ability helps to mitigate underinvestment problems during a crisis which in turn increases firm value.     

Corporate Environmental Responsibility in Polluting Industries: Does Religion Matter?

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008–2010, we empirically investigate whether and how Buddhism, China’s most influential religion, affects corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In this study, we measure Buddhist variables as the number of Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around Chinese listed firms’ registered addresses. In addition, we hand-collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines. Using hand-collected Buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores, we provide strong and robust evidence that Buddhism is significantly positively associated with CER. This finding is consistent with the following view: Buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility, and thereof strengthen CER. Our findings also reveal that the positive association between Buddhism and CER is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index. The results are robust to various measures of Buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests.     

CEO duality leadership and corporate diversification behavior

This study examines an important, yet understudied relationship between CEO duality and corporate diversification. Results based on the data collected from Fortune 1000 U.S companies indicate that CEO duality is positively associated with corporate diversification into unrelated industries. Further analyses reveal that this relationship is moderated by a number of corporate governance mechanisms. We find that board equity ownership and institutional ownership concentration weaken the initially positive relationship between CEO duality and unrelated diversification while CEO tenure and board independence strengthen this relationship.     

环境信息披露对上市公司企业价值的影响——“组织可见度”是否起到中介作用

我国现行企业环境信息披露政策下,企业对于信息披露的方式、时间等有很大的自由裁量权力。因此,企业这一社会责任的自觉履行需要企业价值最大化等动机支撑,但其作用机理是否有效,投资者的关注度及解读尤为重要,亦即“组织可见度”在环境信息披露对企业价值的影响中扮演重要角色。本文以我国化工行业上市公司2013-2017年样本,实证检验环境信息披露对企业价值的影响,并依次从分析师关注水平和媒体关注水平两个角度衡量组织可见度,检验其是否具有中介效应,并分析所有权性质差异下的不同结果。结果表明:环境信息披露能提升企业价值,组织可见度在环境信息披露对企业价值的影响过程中发挥了部分中介效应。进一步研究发现,当使用分析师关注水平衡量组织可见度时,该中介作用只体现在国有企业中;当使用媒体关注度衡量组织可见度时候,该中介作用在两种类型的企业中均只得到了部分体现。企业环境信息披露政策本意是通过其影响企业的市值表现促进企业更好地履行其环境社会责任,本文通过揭示其中组织可见度的中介作用,有助于启示企业对其市值管理、有关管理部门对企业履行环境社会责任引导时的操作思路。