Opening up the firm: What explains participation and effort in voluntary carbon disclosure by global businesses? An analysis of internal firm factors and dynamics

A voluntary climate initiative that has emerged over the past two decades as an institutional arrangement for corporations around the globe to signal and demonstrate their proactive climate leadership is the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Unlike the extant literature that has emphasized stakeholder and regulatory pressures, this paper argues that voluntary carbon disclosure is both beneficial and costly for corporations with respect to the existence of supportive management structures, explicit CSR practices, and the existence of complementary assets. Moreover, there is variation between European firms and other global businesses because of Europe's distinctive national business systems framework in conjunction with global supply chain imperatives. Empirically, this study employs a novel discrete‐continuous modeling approach to distinguish between a corporation's decision to disclose and the linked but subsequent decision of how much to disclose climate change information. Results indicate that the main drivers of participation in voluntary carbon disclosure by the Global 500 firms is the existence of senior managers and executive‐level officers and the adoption of ESG principles by global businesses. Conditional on participation, European Union‐based and other global businesses that articulate a corporate vision for environmental sustainability, adopt ESG principles, and invest in complementary assets disclose climate change strategies and emissions at higher levels than companies without these internal firm capabilities. This study has implications for national climate policy and global climate change governance more generally, both of which increasingly focus on concrete climate solutions by corporations.     

Which institutional investors drive corporate sustainability? A systematic literature review

In this article, we review recent archival research (66 studies) on the influence of institutional ownership (IO) heterogeneity on corporate sustainability. Relying on an agency-theoretical framework, we differentiate between various types of IO and their nature. We found that most prior research concentrates on the impact of IO heterogeneity on corporate sustainability performance. Long-term, sustainable, and foreign IO leads to better ESG/CSR outputs. Based on the business case argument for corporate sustainability, long-term institutional investors moderate the positive link between corporate sustainability and future financial performance. We provide useful recommendations for future research by focusing on endogeneity concerns as methodological challenges and content-related proposals for future research designs.     

How do corporate environmental policy and corporate reputation affect risk‐adjusted financial performance?

The current study aims to answer dual, related questions: Does corporate environmental policy affect corporate reputation, and does this link also influence risk‐adjusted profitability and company's risk? With a comprehensive framework involving analyses of each question, among a sample of firms traced by the Reputation Institute, this study reveals several notable results, after correcting for endogeneity biases. First, environmental engagement and green product innovation are both antecedents of corporate reputation. Second, corporate reputation has a positive impact on risk‐adjusted profitability and Z score indicator of financial distress risk. Thus, corporate environmental responsibility and green practices represent cospecialized assets that enhances an intangible asset, namely, corporate reputation. The latter influence constitutes a missing link between sustainable development and the firm's financial performance. Overall, environmental engagement and corporate reputation act as insurance‐like protections of firm competitiveness.     

基于多层面的企业社会责任行动实施动因的研究

企业是一个多层面系统,不同的因素会对其行为产生不同的影响,认识这些因素对于理解企业行动原因有一定帮助。基于此,文章从宏观环境、企业组织和管理者三个层面上分析了影响企业社会责任行动的因素。认为在这些影响因素共同作用下,企业开展社会责任行动存在不同的动因,并表现出不同的行动类型,这将有助于更好地理解该行动的实际意义。     

国际贸易对气候变化的影响研究综述

随着世界贸易量的急剧增长,贸易自由化引起了一系列对气候变化问题的思考:贸易自由化是否导致温室气体排放的增加?贸易对气候变化影响的程度到底有多大?围绕这些问题,国内外学者进行了大量研究。文章在对国际贸易与气候变化关系的文献进行梳理后,侧重于分析贸易自由化对气候变化影响的研究,主要围绕三个方面对现有文献进行述评:对外贸易的环境效应、环境库茨涅茨曲线、国际贸易隐含碳。这些研究对我国减排目标和政策的制定都具有重要的启示。     

Does doing “good” always translate into doing “well”? An eco‐efficiency perspective

Does doing “good” always translate into doing “well”? Debate over the “value” of corporate social responsibility is high on the agenda of corporate finance research. Deeper understanding is required on managers' incentives to pursue and implement corporate social responsibility related strategies, as is more thorough comprehension of the effect of these strategies to firms' performance levels as well as shareholder and wider stakeholder valuations of the firm. This paper provides a new lens by approaching the subject from a different methodological paradigm, grounded in the performance benchmarking methods more commonly applied in operational research. In so doing, we provide novel evidence of the effect of corporate choices on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategic investment compliance (i.e., doing good) to firms' eco‐efficiency levels (doing well). In brief, our empirical findings suggest that ESG and firm's eco‐performance are nonlinearly related. Specifically, advanced ESG policies and disclosure levels are associated with a positive affect to firms' eco‐efficiency levels, but only up to a point, after which the effect becomes “neutral,” that is, ESG demonstrates a visible pattern of diminishing marginal returns. Thus, we may humbly conclude that a firm may “do well” by doing good, but it is not clear they should ever expect to “do great” just by “doing good.” The threshold at which this “neutrality” appears varies systematically with the characteristics of the sector in which the firm is operating, as well as dimensions of board diversity. Finally, it is evident that ESG implementation choices can be a source of managerial agency problems.