•Assurance enhances the credibility and transparency of sustainability reporting.•The assurance demand is greater in countries at a stage with a strong legal system and culture and in companies ...experiencing strong pressure from their industry.•Sustainability assurance derives from coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphism.•Normative pressure is the institutional factor that exerts the greatest explanatory power in the assurance demand.
This study offers an opportunity to understand how country- and industry-specific effects may affect the decision to assure sustainability reports by identifying institutional pressures. Based on neo-institutional theory, the aim of this research is to highlight whether assurance derives from the coercive, normative and mimetic forces related to legal and cultural strength and the industry pressure for assurance, respectively. The panel data analysis of an international sample of 696 companies for the period 2007–2014 shows that voluntary assurance acts as a legitimization tool implemented by companies in response to normative, coercive and mimetic pressures; that is, companies operating in countries that have a greater legal system and cultural development, especially in industries that are greatly concerned about sustainability, are more likely to issue an assurance statement. Moreover, through a two-stage logit model, we respond to the question of which is the relevant institutional factor that causes voluntary assurance to be adopted. Specifically, we evidence that the normative factor is the one that exerts the greatest explanatory power in the assurance demand, followed by coercive pressure.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the bidirectional relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and innovation according to the resource-based theory.Design ...methodology approach - Based on a sample formed by companies with investments in R&D for the 2003-2007 period worldwide, a bidirectional model is defined, one model in which the innovation realized by companies is a function of CSR practices, activity sector, firm size and risk, and another model in which CSR practices are a function of innovation, activity sector, firm size and risk.Findings - The results of both models show that the bidirectional relationship between the two strategic decisions is negative. However, the effect of the sustainable practices undertaken by those companies listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index on innovative efforts is statistically less significant. It was also found that this type of investment takes three years to show its value added in CSR practices and that the relationship between innovation and corporate social responsibility practices is not the same in different sectors.Practical implications - The empirical evidence suggests that, in general, companies do not implement innovations linked to topics of sustainability; at the same time, an incompatibility exists between investment in R&D and the encouragement of corporate sustainable behavior.Originality value - Previous studies have focused more on analyzing the influence of CSR practices on innovation and in this paper the influence of innovation on CSR practices is also analyzed.
A bibliometric and bibliographic review was carried out to determine the effect that gender diversity in a board of directors has on the level of business commitment to sustainable development and ...stakeholder engagement through the dissemination of social and environmental information. The review included 89 articles published in the 66 most prestigious journals on business, management, ethics and environmental sciences according to the journal citation reports on the ISI Web of Knowledge. There has been spectacular growth in this line of research since 2016, led by Spanish and American researchers. There is currently a paradigm shift in the theoretical frameworks that support these investigations in examining the organisational and institutional environments that favour the advantages associated with the presence of women in bodies responsible for business strategy. However, the latest papers are based on the use of the Critical mass theory and moderating factors in order to explaining the divergence of results.
Abstract
Companies integrate Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their sustainability reports for various reasons. This paper examines whether and how imitation and competitive pressures drive ...the SDG reporting in an international context. Drawing on institutional theory and employing data collected from 36 countries over 6 years (from 2015 to 2020), we found that, at the industry level, the extent of SDG reporting is associated with (a) the average extent of SDG reporting, (b) the extent of SDG reporting of the largest company, and (c) the average extent of SDG reporting of the companies awarded for their sustainability commitments. Additionally, we provide evidence of a positive effect exerted by competitive pressures, as well as evidence that the interaction between various forms of imitation and competition negatively affects SDG reporting. Our results are robust to different subsamples and have key implications for practitioners, regulators, and policymakers.
This article analyzes the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling and financial market outcomes. CSR decoupling refers to the gap between CSR disclosure and CSR ...performance. More specifically, we analyze the effect of CSR decoupling on analysts’ forecast errors, cost of capital, and access to finance. We also examine the moderating effect of forecast errors on relationships between CSR decoupling and cost of capital and access to finance. For a sample of U.S. firms consisting of 7,681 firm-year observations for the period 2006–2015, our empirical evidence supports the idea that a wider gap results in higher analysts’ forecast errors, a greater cost of capital, and reduced access to finance. In addition, our results show that forecast errors enhance the effect of the CSR decoupling on cost of capital and access to financial resources. We also note that external monitoring, in the form of greater analysts’ coverage, reduces CSR decoupling.
This paper aims to examine two closely related issues: first, the effect of the presence of female directors on boards on corporate social responsibility disclosure, focusing on the necessary ...critical mass of this minority group, and, second, the moderation of the human capital of board members—their background, skills, and experience—that could favor the intrinsic female directors' characteristics through the cognitive effect of equal board members. For an international sample of 9,744 firm‐year observations from 2007 to 2016, different panel data regressions are proposed. The findings of this study reveal a positive impact of gender board diversity on voluntary socially responsible disclosure by examining the presence of at least three women on the board—the critical mass. Moreover, the paper reports a greater effect when the board's background, skills, and experience are greater. As a supplemental analysis, the evidence shows that the female role does not remain when women achieve the position of chairperson; that is, female directors adopt a male stereotype regarding voluntary information disclosure when they are also the chairperson of the firm, independently of the human capital of the board members.
Abstract
Knowledge of the initiatives that companies are promoting to curb climate change and the impacts resulting from these activities require the disclosure of relevant information that can be ...used by stakeholders in their decision‐making processes. The objective of this work is to complement previous studies by analysing the effect and type of relationship that exists between internal and market corporate governance mechanisms. We theoretically argue that business transparency related to climate change is explained both by climate governance and by the coverage of the company by financial analysts and that there may be both a complementary and substitutive relationship between the two mechanisms. The results obtained on a global climate governance score show the existence of a substitutive relationship, but the individualised consideration of the components of this score suggests a potential divergent relationship.
Eco‐innovation and eco‐design strategies are associated with firms' innovation capabilities. Moreover, they may impact on access to public subsidies and on financial performance. In this respect, the ...agri‐food industry is especially vulnerable, because in general, this sector has less experience of technological innovation, and managers are more likely to be averse to such projects. On the other hand, the board may promote a proactive environmental approach to defend the interests of investors and other stakeholders, taking the view that these strategies reduce the environmental impact of the firm's products and its production processes and are therefore beneficial. Our study aim is to identify the profile of directors who may be favourable to eco‐design and eco‐innovation strategies, focusing on the traits of independence, gender diversity and environmental specialisation. The results obtained, from a dependence model based on panel data supplied by 321 agri‐food companies for the period 2002–2017 (unbalanced panel data with 4878 observations), show that independent directors play a crucial role in implementing eco‐innovation and eco‐design projects. However, neither the diversity nor the specialisation of directors is a significant factor in this regard.
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