Green Governance: Boards of Directors’ Composition and Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility
Top Cited Papers
- 24 February 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Business & Society
- Vol. 50 (1), 189-223
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650310394642
Abstract
This study contributes to the work on board composition and firm corporate social responsibility by extending it to the environmental domain. It evaluates the relationship between boards of directors’ composition and environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) by integrating literatures on board composition, firm corporate social responsibility, and individual differences in attitudes toward and information about environmental issues. Using disclosed company data and the natural environment ratings data from Kinder Lydenberg Domini (KLD) Inc. for 78 Fortune 1000 companies, the study finds that a higher proportion of outside board directors is associated with more favorable ECSR and higher KLD strengths scores. Firms with boards composed of three or more female directors received higher KLD strengths scores. And, boards whose directors average closer to 56 years in age and those with a higher proportion of Western European directors are more likely to implement environmental governance structures or processes. Our results also reinforce growing concerns around unidimensional KLD measures.Keywords
This publication has 87 references indexed in Scilit:
- Does the Market Respond to an Endorsement of Social Responsibility? The Role of Institutions, Information, and LegitimacyJournal of Management, 2009
- Workforce Diversity and Inequality: Power, Status, and NumbersAnnual Review of Sociology, 2007
- The Significance of Gender in Predicting the Cognitive Moral Development of Business Practitioners Using the Sociomoral Reflection Objective MeasureJournal of Business Ethics, 2007
- Values and Attitudes Toward Social and Environmental Accountability: a Study of MBA StudentsJournal of Business Ethics, 2007
- Corporate Directors and Social Responsibility: Ethics versus Shareholder ValueJournal of Business Ethics, 2006
- Environmental Reporting of Global Corporations: A Content Analysis based on Website DisclosuresJournal of Business Ethics, 2006
- ‘The Business of Ethics and Gender’Journal of Business Ethics, 2006
- The Hare and the Tortoise Revisited: The New Politics of Consumer and Environmental Regulation in EuropeBritish Journal of Political Science, 2003
- Green Buying: The Influence of Environmental Concern on Consumer BehaviorThe Journal of Social Psychology, 1997
- A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal ScalesEducational and Psychological Measurement, 1960