Board gender diversity and environmental performance: An industries perspective

This study investigates whether gender diversity on the board of directors in the United States is associated with firms' environmental performance. Under the theoretical framework of resource dependence theory, we argue that gender diversity brings a greater variety of skills to the board. Diversity allows for a healthy mix of knowledge and experience to improve the decision‐making process of the board. Using propensity score matching and controlling for endogeneity, this study uses a more rigorous statistical model than previous work. It also uses content analysis of directors' biographies to provide evidence of the role that gender diversity plays. We find gender diversity is positively associated with firms' environmental performance scores primarily in the more environmentally impacting industries. Therefore, our research provides valuable direction for those firms working to improve both their boards' gender diversity and their environmental performance. Our findings also offer insight into the mixed results of previous studies.     

A study of environmental policies and regulations,governance structures,and environmental performance: The role of female directors

This paper seeks to contribute to the existing business strategy and the environment literature by examining the effect of governance structures on environmental performance within a unique context of improving environmental governance, policies, regulations, and management. Specifically, we investigate the extent to which corporate board gender diversity, including the proportion, age, and level of education of female directors, affects environmental performance of Chinese publicly listed corporations. Using one of the largest Chinese data sets to date, consisting of a sample of 383 listed A‐shares from 2011 to 2015 (i.e., observations of 1,674), our findings are threefold. First, we find that the proportion and age of female directors have a positive effect on the overall corporate environmental performance. Second, our findings indicate that the proportion and age of female directors also have a positive effect on the three individual environmental performance components, namely, environmental (a) strategy, (b) implementation, and (c) disclosure. Finally, and by contrast, we do not find any evidence that suggests that the level of education of female directors has any impact on environmental performance, neither the overall environmental performance measure nor its individual components. Our findings have important implication for regulators and policymakers. Our evidence is robust to controlling for alternative measures, other governance and firm‐level control variables, and possible endogeneities. We interpret our findings within a multitheoretical framework that draws insights from agency, legitimacy, neo‐institutional, resource dependence, stakeholder, and tokenism theoretical perspectives.     

Board gender diversity,environmental committee and greenhouse gas voluntary disclosures

We explore the impact of gender diversity and environmental committees on greenhouse gas (GHG) voluntary disclosures utilising a sample of 215 firms, which are listed on the London Stock Exchange market. We provide strong evidence for a strong positive association between GHG voluntary disclosures and gender diversity, which constitutes an important input to the ongoing debate about the role of women in the boardroom. The governance mechanism of environmental committees is not found to significantly affect GHG disclosures. This adds to the growing empirical evidence in the literature that questions the effectiveness of the current board structures in serving the wider needs of stakeholders and in addressing the relevant issues on climate change. Overall, our results suggest that by being diverse and open to a mixed‐gender governance approach, a firm can better serve the demands of stakeholders and legitimise their green credentials, thus gaining more trust from a broad range of stakeholders other than their shareholders. The noneffectiveness of the environmental committees in enhancing GHG voluntary disclosures demonstrates that firms may not have to directly link the relevant governance mechanism to their disclosure decisions and practices.     

Family ownership and environmental performance: The mediation effect of human resource practices

Previous literature has found that listed family firms underperform their nonfamily counterparts in terms of environmental performance, but has not explained why this occurs. We address this research gap by hypothesizing that training and development practices (i.e., managerial practices devoted to providing training and development for the workforce) mediate the relationship between family blockholders and environmental performance. Using a sample of 33,901 firm‐year observations from 2002 to 2016 distributed across 56 countries and employing the structural equation model technique, we find that investment in training and development practices explains almost half of the negative relationship between family blockholders and environmental performance. Our study contributes to the agency theory debate on principal–principal problems by explaining why family blockholders could damage other blockholders and minority shareholders.     

Environmental strategy in the global banking industry within the varieties of capitalism approach: The moderating role of gender diversity and board members with specific skills

This research sets out to analyse environmental disclosure in the banking industry by considering the varieties of capitalism framework. This approach is concerned with the way companies interact strategically to resolve coordination issues arising from their operations, and it is supported by prior research. This is a fruitful perspective for exploring the association between country‐level factors and disclosure by firms, such as environmental reporting. This research is based on an international sample of countries operating in coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs). The results obtained show that financial institutions operating in CME countries are involved in more environmental matters than banks domiciled in LME countries. As regards the moderating variables, the evidence shows that women on the boards of banks in CME countries encourage the reporting of environmental information, as predicted. Nonetheless, and contrary to our expectations, members with specific skills on boards within CME cultures do not favour greater disclosure of environmental information compared with those on boards of banks operating in LME contexts.     

Board interlocks,absorptive capacity,and environmental performance

Coupling resource dependence theory with absorptive capacity concepts, we analyze the role absorptive capacity plays as a potential facilitator between board interlocks and environmental performance. Board interlocks act as avenues for knowledge and information that exist outside the organization to become resources to improve environmental performance. However, an organization also needs the ability to utilize knowledge to implement activities that lead to better environmental performance. Our results show that firms with a diversity of interlocks (greater number of board interlocks, interlocks in the same and different industries, and interlocks with top performers) achieve better environmental performance. Furthermore, we find that absorptive capacity, as measured by research and development (R&D) intensity, moderates the relationship between board interlocks and environmental performance.     

The impact of sustainability (environmental,social, and governance) disclosure and board diversity on firm value: The moderating role of industry sensitivity

Using a large panel data set comprising 812 listed European firms, this study investigates whether sustainability disclosure (environmental, social, and governance) and female representation on boards affect firm value. We observe a positive impact of sustainability disclosure and board gender diversity on firm value, suggesting that the best management practices, enhanced stakeholder trust, and female representation on boards improve firm value. We observe that the firms in sensitive industries achieve superior social and governance performance. We also observe that the firms with higher female representation on their boards present significantly superior environmental, social, and governance performance. Our results are robust to different firm and country specific control variables and to year‐ and country‐fixed effects.     

Family ownership and stockholder reactions to environmental performance disclosure: A test of secondary agency relationships

Using the first ever Newsweek “Green Rankings” of the 500 largest U. S. firms in 2009 as a significant historical event, we test for the stockholder reaction to ratings of corporate environmental performance. Both the conventional null hypothesis significance testing and Bayesian approaches show that stockholders react significantly more positively to corporations with higher ratings of corporate environmental performance and that this effect is stronger in family owned firms. Our findings suggest that majority shareholders do not necessarily appropriate minority stockholders' rents when investing in environmental activities, as would be the case in the presence of “Type II” agency conflicts between majority family owners and minority stockholders. The family ownership effect is also found to be stronger in dirty (heavy polluting) industries as well as in more competitive and more opaque industry contexts.     

Servant leadership,organizational identification,and work‐to‐family enrichment: The moderating role of work climate for sharing family concerns

The present study investigates the impact of servant leadership as perceived by followers on their work‐to‐family enrichment (WFE) by focusing on the mediating role of organizational identification and the moderating role of work climate for sharing family concerns. The results from a field survey of 230 married managers in China provide full support for our hypotheses, indicating that perceived servant leadership is positively related to WFE; this relationship is also mediated by organizational identification. In addition, work climate for sharing family concerns attenuates the effects of servant leadership on organizational identification and WFE. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The influence of cultural context on the relationship between gender diversity and team performance: a meta-analysis

The impact of gender diversity on team performance has become a central topic in the field of human resource management for researchers and practitioners alike. Extant research provides conflicting evidence on the relationship between gender diversity and team performance. To resolve these contradictory findings, we meta-analyze the relationship between gender diversity and two performance outcomes, namely task performance and contextual performance. Grounded in categorization-elaboration model, we simultaneously consider the positive and negative aspects of gender diversity. We further examine the effect of cultural context as a moderator on the relationship between gender diversity and team performance. Based on 71 independent samples from 68 studies published between 1996 and 2013, we find a significant negative relationship ( ? 0.10) between gender diversity and contextual performance. Additionally, we find that the cultural dimensions gender egalitarianism and collectivism have significant moderating influences on the relationship between gender diversity and task performance.     

Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

National diversity and team performance: the moderating role of interactional justice climate

In this team-level study, we present and test a model in which two aspects of interactional justice climate, its level and its strength, interact to moderate the effects of national diversity on team performance. Connecting the literatures on team diversity and (interactional) justice climate, we hypothesize that a high level of interactional justice exhibited by the line manager promotes the performance of nationally diverse teams, but only when team members share this perception (i.e. when the climate is strong). Using time-lagged performance measurement, we conducted a multisource field study using data from 272 employees clustered in 45 teams who worked for a local subsidiary of a multinational enterprise. The findings confirm our hypothesis and have implications for the diversity and justice literatures, while advancing knowledge that promotes the effective management of increasingly diverse workforces in this era of globalization.     

The interplay of corporate entrepreneurship,environmental orientation,and performance in clean‐tech firms—A double‐edged sword

Clean‐tech innovations are an important driver in solving global issues such as climate change and for the sustainable development of economies around the world. Whereas a large part of the literature focuses on clean‐tech ventures, less is known on corporate entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurial behavior in established firms and its relation to sustainability. This paper extends the sustainable entrepreneurship debate to corporate entrepreneurship, which represents a fruitful avenue to further developing clean technologies. We focus particularly on clean‐tech firms' organizational preparedness for corporate entrepreneurship (OPCE), that is, how well a firm's structures and processes are set for entrepreneurial activities. On the basis of contingency theory, this study investigates how the level of OPCE influences the environmental and financial performance of clean‐tech firms and whether their environmental orientation affects these relationships. Building on data from 103 firms, we find support for a positive effect of OPCE on both environmental and financial performance. Both effects are stronger the higher the external environmental orientation. In contrast, the leverage of internal environmental orientation is not equally positive. Our study reveals that the effect of OPCE on financial performance diminishes for firms that are more strongly driven by an internal than an external environmental orientation.     

Factors affecting corporate environmental disclosure in emerging markets: The role of corporate governance structures

This study seeks to examine whether internal corporate governance (CG) mechanisms affect corporate environmental disclosure (CED) in emerging economies. Using a sample of 500 firm-year observations, this study distinctively applies a linear panel quantile regression (PQR) model to examine the CG–CED nexus in Jordan. This technique is supplemented with conducting a two-step dynamic generalised method of moment (GMM) model to overcome any potential occurrence of endogeneity problems. This study reports an increasing trend in CED practice among the sampled companies over the period of analysis, yet it is still at an early stage as compared with their developed counterparts. Furthermore, this study suggests that board size, board independence, CEO duality and foreign ownership have positive associations with CED. In contrast, managerial ownership, institutional ownership and ownership concentration are negatively associated with the disclosed amount of environmental information in the Jordanian context. Theoretically, board structures appeared to be more efficient than ownership structures in reducing agency conflicts by addressing the asymmetric gap of information and promoting the disclosure of environmental information. These findings add to the debate about whether ownership structures detrimental to CED in developing economies. Specifically, when it comes to spending money on CED, owners seemed to be more concerned about any reductions in their share of the pie and may, therefore, be less motivated to disclose their companies' environmental information. This paper provides managers, owners and policymakers with a set of context-specific recommendations related to the crucial need for a more concerted effort to integrate governance and environmental regulations in order to ensure sustainability in emerging markets.     

Open search strategies and firm performance: The different moderating role of technological environmental dynamism

Mainly driven by the rapid progress of the ‘open innovation’ paradigm, previous research has devoted considerable efforts in investigating how the degree of openness to external knowledge influences firms׳ innovation performance. However, much less is known about its impact on performance at the firm level. Moreover, the question of which open search strategy is more suitable depending on environmental features is unresolved. We focus on breadth and depth as two distinct open search strategies and claim that, besides their different benefits in terms of learning and innovation, it is also necessary to consider their costs. Based on survey data of 248 high-technology manufacturing Spanish firms, this study extends recent research about the context dependency of openness effectiveness by showing that the effect of these two open search strategies on perceived firm performance is contingent with technological environmental dynamism in a reverse fashion. While search breadth is found to be positively associated with performance in less technologically dynamic environments, it seems to hurt performance in more dynamic contexts. On the contrary, while search depth is found to have a positive effect on performance in highly technologically dynamic environments, it appears to harm firm performance in more stable contexts.     

The influence of managerial satisfaction on corporate environmental performance and reputation

Organizational studies have widely debated the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Some papers have dealt with managerial satisfaction and businesses' performance adopting agency theory to interpret the results. However, no studies have yet considered the relationship between the satisfaction levels of an environmental manager and corporate environmental performance. This paper thus analyses the role played by the environmental manager's satisfaction in enhancing corporate environmental performance and reputation. The paper uses data from a survey of 412 Eco Management and Audit Scheme registered organizations. The results show a positive relationship between managerial satisfaction and environmental performance, whereas no such positive relationship was found when considering eco‐innovation performance. In addition, the environmental manager's satisfaction has a positive and indirect influence on the corporate environmental reputation. These results contribute to the literature on agency theory and aim to extend the debate between job satisfaction and job performance to the sustainable business field.     

Board gender diversity and carbon emissions: European evidence on curvilinear relationships and critical mass

The role of European businesses in addressing environmental issues and climate change has taken center stage with the European Green Deal. With increasing attention to the effect of board gender diversity (BGD) on firms' environmental performance, the question arises whether BGD has any influence on carbon emissions. Based on legitimacy and critical mass theory, this study empirically investigates the impact of BGD on firms' carbon performance (CP), based on total carbon emissions intensity. The paper relies on two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions with instrumental variable (IV) and a two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) system approach to analyze a cross-country sample of 3123 observations from non-financial firms in the European STOXX600 index over the 2009–2018 period. Our findings add to the growing empirical evidence twofold: (1) there is a robust linear and positive relationship between BGD and CP, whereas some indication of a U-shaped relationship is found; and (2) we find that a critical mass of at least two women directors needs to be reached to increase CP. Our research results contribute to the current discussion on sustainable corporate governance, especially in the European capital market, and have implications for researchers, business practice, and regulatory issues alike.     

Environmental sustainability orientation and performance of family and nonfamily firms

Despite the growing research evidence on the effect of environmental sustainability orientation (ESO) on firm outcomes, contingent factors that may influence the strength of this relationship have received little scholarly attention. In this study, we use insights from the literature on ESO and family business to introduce family status and firm age as moderators in the ESO‐performance linkage. Using time‐lagged data from 253 small and medium‐sized enterprises in Ghana, we found the impact of ESO on firm performance is amplified for nonfamily firms but not significant for family firms. Our evidence suggests it is stronger among older firms than younger ones. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

ISO 14001, EMAS and environmental performance: A meta‐analysis

The adoption of voluntary environmental certifications such as ISO 14001 and Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) has gained momentum in the last two decades. The scholarly literature has analyzed in depth the performance implications of the adoption of these certificates. Yet the findings are scattered and inconclusive. This article aims to shed light on this issue by meta‐analyzing the influence of the adoption of voluntary environmental certifications on corporate environmental performance, drawing on a sample of 53 scholarly studies analyzing a total of 182,926 companies. The findings show a positive influence of ISO 14001 and EMAS certifications on corporate environmental performance. A set of underlying moderating effects are also identified, such as a more pronounced positive effect for adoptions based on environmental innovation and for firms with a more mature certification. Implications for scholars, managers, and other stakeholders are discussed.     

HRM retrenchment practices and firm performance in times of economic downturn: exploring the moderating effects of family involvement in management

A substantial number of studies have indicated a significant negative relationship between human resource management (HRM) retrenchment practices such as downsizing, and firm performance. However, a consideration of the potential effects of business family involvement in management is largely absent from the general employment restructuring literature. Using a sample of 218 Taiwanese publicly listed firms, this study seeks to further our understanding in this area by examining the moderating effects of family involvement in management on the relationship between the adoption of HRM retrenchment practices and firm performance during the period of global economic downturn that erupted in the middle of 2008. Data analysis reveals that HRM retrenchment practices had a negative influence on firm performance, and that the relationship between HRM retrenchment practices and firm performance was negatively and significantly moderated by family involvement in management.