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Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management
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Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 37642

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Lawrence Loh

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Governance and Sustainability & Department of Strategy and Policy, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, 15 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119245, Singapore
Interests: strategic management; innovation management; corporate sustainability; corporate governance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability, in its current conceptualization, has evolved for several decades along the perspective of sustainable development. Yet its alignment with corporate governance has taken a somewhat disparate trajectory. The received framing of sustainability, particularly in corporate practices, is in the so-called “ESG” area which stands for “environmental, social and governance”. In essence, governance is positioned as an aspect or even constituent of sustainability.

However, governance is, in reality, a precursor that drives sustainability. It is the foundational underpinning of sustainability that determines its manifestation and contextualization. Indeed corporate governance has progressed along its own disciplinary path that is separate from the sustainability development thread. It tends to encompass specific thrusts that relate to the primacy of the board of directors and particular issues in audit and risks. In addition, corporate governance covers broader representations in information disclosures and transparencies.

There is a pressing need for better scholarly expositions on the convergence of sustainability and corporate governance. This will have to go beyond existing practices and serve to guide new conceptual understandings and application modalities. More fundamentally, sustainability, together with corporate governance, are also critical considerations in the strategic management of organizations. The three notions, in fact, constitute a coherent triangle that determines organizational effectiveness and success in the broader external environment.

This Special Issue seeks scholarly papers that integrate sustainability with corporate governance in the setting of strategic management. It welcomes multifaceted approaches to the theme, including conceptual, empirical and case studies. These can deal with a variety of settings such as for-profit companies including family businesses, nonprofit organizations including charities, and public sector agencies including governments.

Prof. Dr. Lawrence Loh
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainability
  • Sustainable development
  • Corporate governance
  • Environmental, social and governance (ESG)
  • Sustainable strategy
  • Governance strategy

Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 246 KiB  
Article
Can Family Members’ Involvement Improve Technological Innovation? Empirical Study Based on Chinese Family-Owned Enterprises
by Lingling Zhuang, Lawrence Loh and Minna Zheng
Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10508; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su122410508 - 15 Dec 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1705
Abstract
From the perspective of agency theory, family members’ involvement is negatively correlated with technological innovation. However, from the perspective of stewardship theory, it is believed that family members’ involvement is positively correlated with technological innovation. From the phenomenon mentioned above, this paper studies [...] Read more.
From the perspective of agency theory, family members’ involvement is negatively correlated with technological innovation. However, from the perspective of stewardship theory, it is believed that family members’ involvement is positively correlated with technological innovation. From the phenomenon mentioned above, this paper studies the influence of family members’ involvement on R&D investment and R&D output and tests the above competitive hypotheses. Based on the 2007–2016 data of A-share listed family-owned enterprises, this empirical study found that family members involved in corporate management not only save R&D investment, but they also increase R&D output. After controlling for endogeneity, the above conclusions are still valid. This study provides empirical evidence for the objective recognition of the relationship between family members’ involvement and technological innovation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
19 pages, 358 KiB  
Article
How Does Board Gender Diversity Influence the Likelihood of Becoming a UN Global Compact Signatory? The Mediating Effect of the CSR Committee
by Jennifer Martínez-Ferrero, Mehmet Eryilmaz and Nese Colakoglu
Sustainability 2020, 12(10), 4329; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12104329 - 25 May 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3437
Abstract
The aim of this study was to improve the understanding of the factors determining a firm’s affiliation with the United Nations Global Compact (UN GC) as the largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative worldwide. Drawing on the board perspective of the firm, this paper [...] Read more.
The aim of this study was to improve the understanding of the factors determining a firm’s affiliation with the United Nations Global Compact (UN GC) as the largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative worldwide. Drawing on the board perspective of the firm, this paper examines the effect of gender diversity and the mediating effect of the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee. To test the paper’s objectives, the authors use an international sample of analysis of 29,951 firm-year observations from 2012 to 2018. The results suggest that female directors on the board significantly encourage the firm’s affiliation with the UN GC and support the mediating effect of the existence of a CSR committee. Therefore, the positive impact of female directors on UN GC signatories appears to be mediated by the existence of a CSR committee. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
18 pages, 1694 KiB  
Article
How do Environmental, Social and Governance Initiatives Affect Innovative Performance for Corporate Sustainability?
by Qi Zhang, Lawrence Loh and Weiwei Wu
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3380; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12083380 - 21 Apr 2020
Cited by 40 | Viewed by 6818
Abstract
Corporate sustainability has been a long-established topic in the corporate operating process. Much research focuses on the internal relationships among environmental, social and economic dimensions of corporate sustainability, yet few studies have examined the topic from the perspective of environmental, social and governance [...] Read more.
Corporate sustainability has been a long-established topic in the corporate operating process. Much research focuses on the internal relationships among environmental, social and economic dimensions of corporate sustainability, yet few studies have examined the topic from the perspective of environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives and innovative performance. Using insights from stakeholder theory, this study develops theoretical linkages between corporate ESG initiatives and innovative performance. It further considers whether these relationships still exist under different institutional development settings. Based on the samples of 433 observations which are listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, in China, from 2007 to 2017, empirical results using the method of hierarchical regression analysis have confirmed that corporate environmental initiatives, social initiatives and governance initiatives have direct positive impacts on innovative performance. Furthermore, in examining the interactive effect of individual dimensions of ESG initiatives, the results reveal that corporate governance initiatives play a moderating role in the relationship between environmental initiatives and innovative performance and in the relationship between social initiatives and innovative performance. Finally, the empirical analyses also show that institutional development influences the effectiveness of corporate governance initiatives. This research contributes to extending the prior literature and providing several recommendations for firms to achieve corporate sustainability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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19 pages, 1365 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Innovation Governance: An Analysis of Regional Innovation with a Super Efficiency Slack-Based Measure Model
by Kai Xu, Lawrence Loh and Qiang Chen
Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 3008; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12073008 - 09 Apr 2020
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3146
Abstract
As China is undergoing economic transformation and facing increasing energy and environmental problems, it is essential to pay special attention to sustainable innovation governance. This research took industrial waste and total energy consumption into consideration and uses a super efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) [...] Read more.
As China is undergoing economic transformation and facing increasing energy and environmental problems, it is essential to pay special attention to sustainable innovation governance. This research took industrial waste and total energy consumption into consideration and uses a super efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model to empirically evaluate the regional innovation efficiency of Chinese provinces. The results showed that the efficiency of China’s regional sustainable innovation has not changed significantly over recent years. In addition, the results also showed large and varying degrees of innovation efficiency across different provinces. Eastern China, in comparison to central and western China, showed higher innovation efficiency. In addition, we found a slightly increasing trend in terms of innovation efficiency disparities between the three areas. On the basis of these findings, the reasons for the innovation efficiency gap between different regions were analyzed. The impacts of influential factors on sustainable innovation efficiency were further explored. We found that technology market maturity affected sustainable innovation efficiency positively, while government funding had a negative impact on sustainable innovation efficiency. Industrial structure and environmental regulations had no significant effect on sustainable innovation efficiency. Finally, some implications for improving governance performance in terms of sustainable innovation were provided. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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21 pages, 1561 KiB  
Article
Well-Governed Sustainability and Financial Performance: A New Integrative Approach
by Marian Siminica, Mirela Cristea, Mirela Sichigea, Gratiela Georgiana Noja and Ion Anghel
Sustainability 2019, 11(17), 4562; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11174562 - 22 Aug 2019
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3747
Abstract
This study investigates the interlinkages between the dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR-economic, environmental, social), financial performance (ROA, ROE), and corporate governance (CG), by applying the structural equation modeling technique (SEM). It is based on a sample of 614 large companies from the [...] Read more.
This study investigates the interlinkages between the dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR-economic, environmental, social), financial performance (ROA, ROE), and corporate governance (CG), by applying the structural equation modeling technique (SEM). It is based on a sample of 614 large companies from the European Economic Area, covering specific indicators published by the Thomson Reuters database, for the years 2013–2017. The equation models are structured starting from isolated dependencies between variables, up to the global ones (direct, indirect, and total dependencies). The mixed results obtained imply that the nature and heterogenous content of CSR lead to different statistical dependencies for each of the two financial performance indicators. ROA is positively influenced by the economic dimension of CSR, but, the level of this rate does not necessarily contribute to an increase in the involvement of the company in this type of CSR actions. At the same time, ROA is influenced and affects in a negative way the environmental and social dimensions of CSR. In the case of ROE, it is influenced and impacts the economic and social dimensions in a positive way. The environmental dimension of CSR influences ROE positively, but it is negatively affected by this profitability rate. Corporate governance exerts a positive impact on all of the model’s variables, both as a direct and indirect factor of influence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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20 pages, 1080 KiB  
Article
A Hybrid MCDM Model for Evaluating Strategic Alliance Partners in the Green Biopharmaceutical Industry
by Mu-Hsin Chang, James J. H. Liou and Huai-Wei Lo
Sustainability 2019, 11(15), 4065; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11154065 - 27 Jul 2019
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 3855
Abstract
Since the rise of strategic alliances which play such an important role in industry today, the biopharmaceutical industry worldwide has entered an era of rapid change and collaborative thinking. The strategic alliance is one of the most important strategies for the green biopharmaceutical [...] Read more.
Since the rise of strategic alliances which play such an important role in industry today, the biopharmaceutical industry worldwide has entered an era of rapid change and collaborative thinking. The strategic alliance is one of the most important strategies for the green biopharmaceutical industry. Member organizations in these alliances work together to create more advantageous biotechnologies based on environmental protection to achieve mutual benefits. In the past, there have been only a few studies discussing partner evaluations and the selection process for the green biopharmaceutical industry, so the criteria or indicators are still not complete. Therefore, this study proposes a novel multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework for strategic alliance partner evaluation that combines the best-worst method (BWM) and the fuzzy TOPSIS technique based on the concept of aspiration level (called fuzzy TOPSIS-AL) to evaluate the performance and priority rankings of strategic alliance partners. The BWM overcomes the shortcomings of small sample sizes and streamlines the number of conventional pairwise comparisons needed. The fuzzy TOPSIS-AL technique introduces the concept of the aspiration level, thereby leading to more reasonable suggestions for improvement. In addition, data from a multinational green biopharmaceutical company survey are utilized to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the proposed model. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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17 pages, 241 KiB  
Article
Environmental Protection and Corporate Responsibility: The Perspectives of Senior Managers and CxOs in China
by Cubie L.L. Lau, Zinette Bergman and Manfred Max Bergman
Sustainability 2019, 11(13), 3610; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11133610 - 01 Jul 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3036
Abstract
In the mid-2000s, China’s environmental crisis had become a major social and political ‘hot spot’. In the interest of civic conciliation, national stability, and performance legitimacy, the Chinese government responded by introducing the ‘Scientific Approach to Development’ as part of the 11th Five-Year [...] Read more.
In the mid-2000s, China’s environmental crisis had become a major social and political ‘hot spot’. In the interest of civic conciliation, national stability, and performance legitimacy, the Chinese government responded by introducing the ‘Scientific Approach to Development’ as part of the 11th Five-Year Plan in 2005. It signaled a significant policy shift, in which the government reoriented China’s national goals away from ‘Growth First’ policies and toward a model of sustainable development. In this study, we explore how Chinese business leaders reacted to this significant policy change. Specifically, our aim is three-fold: (1) to identify how senior managers and CxOs (executives or owners of enterprises, including CEOs, CFOs, CSOs) of Chinese firms responded to the explicit and systemic introduction of environmental management in the 11th Five-Year Plan; (2) examine motivations and justifications associated with their responses; (3) and explore contexts in which different motivations connected to organizational change and its management. In our study, we examine the perspectives of 72 senior managers and CxOs in China. We find that the integration of environmental management and corporate responsibility policies was predominately driven by national, international, and market contexts, and motivated by instrumental, relational, and moral considerations. We identify complex strategies and implementation plans that transformed government directives into multiple and overlapping business strategies. The main contribution of our study is the identification of specific sets of strategies employed by firms to concurrently comply with government directives and seek profits. Broadly speaking, these environmental management strategies are divided into compliance, a pursuit of competitive advantage, and a structural integration of environmental management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
16 pages, 2287 KiB  
Article
Sustainability Governance in China: An Analysis of Regional Ecological Efficiency
by Xiangxiang Sun and Lawrence Loh
Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 1958; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11071958 - 02 Apr 2019
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 2887
Abstract
The Chinese government is committed to sustainability governance to alleviate the shortage of energy and the imbalance between ecological environment and economic development. This paper evaluates and analyzes the sustainability governance performance of China. A bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed to [...] Read more.
The Chinese government is committed to sustainability governance to alleviate the shortage of energy and the imbalance between ecological environment and economic development. This paper evaluates and analyzes the sustainability governance performance of China. A bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed to evaluate sustainability governance performance of 30 provinces based on ecological efficiency in China from 1998 to 2015. The results indicate that the ecological efficiency of China significantly improved as a whole, which is related to the decline in sulfur dioxide emissions. Among these provinces, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia exhibited the highest values, while Gansu, Chongqing, and Sichuan had the lowest values. The 30 provinces were divided into four sub-areas. The average ecological efficiency of the eastern area was the highest, followed by the northeast area. Compared to the east area, northeast area, and central area, we find that west area obviously falls behind. As such, the results provide helpful guidance to improve ecological governance performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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15 pages, 408 KiB  
Article
Ingredients of Sustainable CEO Behaviour: Theory and Practice
by Gianpaolo Abatecola and Matteo Cristofaro
Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 1950; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11071950 - 02 Apr 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 8003
Abstract
What CEO attributes can improve corporate sustainability? In this regard, what do superstar CEOs, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, have in common? Also, did the personalities of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay contribute to the crack in the [...] Read more.
What CEO attributes can improve corporate sustainability? In this regard, what do superstar CEOs, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, have in common? Also, did the personalities of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay contribute to the crack in the US Enron Corporation early in this century? Why, as far as presidential elections are concerned, are some countries, more than others, more likely to vote for seemingly narcissistic politicians? In our practice-oriented review article, we aim to contribute to shedding new light on the challenging evidence continuously evolving around CEOs, in general, and around their effect on corporate sustainability, in particular. Two distinctive features represent the main “so-what” value of our work. First, each of the CEO attributes which we sequentially focus on (i.e., power, personality, profiles, and effect) is, at the beginning, not only separately considered but also associated with many recent examples from business life and from the “CEO world” at an international level. Second, from our analysis, we then derive a conceptual framework which, combining all these attributes into a unique body of knowledge, could be used as a potential starting point for future investigations in this challenging research area regarding the CEO/sustainability relationship. In this regard, we believe understanding how all the analysed attributes coevolve will represent a pivotal question to address if we want to enhance the scientific and practical understanding of CEO (sustainable) behaviour. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Corporate Governance and Strategic Management)
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