Business Ethics the Environment & Responsibility最新文献

Drawing on the upper echelon theory, this paper explores the relationship between CEO ability and ESG responsibility fulfillment. Based on this, it further explores the mediating role of organizational resilience and the moderating role of environmental uncertainty. Using data from Chinese A-share-listed manufacturing companies from 2010 to 2020, we find that CEO ability promotes ESG responsibility fulfillment, and organizational resilience mediates this relationship. Furthermore, the promotion effect of CEO ability on ESG responsibility fulfillment through organizational resilience is stronger under high environmental uncertainty. Additionally, the influence of CEO ability on ESG responsibility fulfillment is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and low environmental sensitivity industries. Our study opens the “black box” of the mechanism between CEO ability and ESG responsibility fulfillment and provides practical implications for organizations, managers, and policymakers to promote ESG responsibility fulfillment.

This study examines the impact of government divestiture on corporate environmental investment (EI) and investigates how regional development moderates this relationship. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2022, we employ a fixed-effect model to analyze the data. Our findings reveal a negative effect of government divestiture on EI. Furthermore, we observe that regional development mitigates this negative impact, indicating that firms operating in developed environments are more inclined to prioritize environmental concerns, likely due to increased stakeholder monitoring. To address concerns regarding endogeneity, we utilize propensity score matching (PSM), Heckman tests, and the generalized method of moments (GMM). Overall, our results carry significant policy implications, particularly regarding the environmental consequences of privatization in emerging markets like China.

This study examines the relationship between leadership coaching behavior and team knowledge creation, and its subsequent impact on team environmental performance in the tourism sector. Moreover, this study investigates the moderating role of organizational learning culture in the relationship between team knowledge creation and team environmental performance. Data were collected from 356 employees and their immediate supervisors, nested in 78 teams. The analysis employed moderated mediation model utilizing SPSS and AMOS. The findings indicate that leadership coaching behavior exerts a significant direct positive influence on knowledge creation, which, in turn, positively affects team environmental performance. Additionally, the results reveal that the organizational learning culture moderates the relationship between leadership coaching behavior and knowledge creation, as well as the indirect relationship between leadership coaching behavior and team environmental performance via knowledge creation. The theoretical framework of social exchange theory provides support for this study. The insights generated from this research offer valuable guidance for managers and policymakers seeking to enhance their team's environmental performance through leadership coaching and knowledge creation.

The impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores on firm performance (FP) has long been a focus of theoretical and practical debate. We address this controversy by focusing on Chinese heavy-polluting firms. Drawing on agent theory and threat rigidity theory, we propose that top management team (TMT) stability and external pressures (government environmental punishment and negative media coverage) jointly affect the relationship between ESG scores and FP. Analyzing data from 1392 A-share listed heavy-polluting firms in China from 2007 to 2022, our findings reveal that heavy-polluting firms with higher ESG scores tend to exhibit poorer FP. Notably, this relationship varies based on TMT stability and external pressures. Specifically, TMT stability weakens the negative effect of ESG scores on FP. When external pressures are high, TMT stability negatively impacts the relationship between ESG scores and FP. Conversely, TMT stability positively affects this relationship when external pressures are low. This study identifies the specific conditions in which TMT stability affects from the perspective of agency theory and threat rigidity theory, and provides a new insight for firms and governments in emerging economies to promote ESG practices effectively.

Hybrid organizations that pursue both financial and social goals have gained significant attention within the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Furthermore, an ongoing concern within hybrid organization research centers on the tensions between multiple goals. We establish a behavioral theory of hybrid organizations based on both the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) and imprinting theory to interpret the patterns of simultaneous or sequential pursuit of conflicting goals. Drawing evidence from China's mixed-ownership enterprises (MOEs), we examine the impact of institutional imprinting on managerial attention priority. Our findings show that originally state-owned MOEs simultaneously pursue financial and social goals, while originally privately-owned MOEs sequentially pursue dual goals. Moreover, the persistence and decay of this institutional imprint are affected by internal and external sources of coalition power. By examining how financial performance feedback impacts tensions of dual goals, we contribute to the literature dialogue between hybrid organizations and BTOF.

The adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has implications for a company's relationships with its stakeholders. Specifically, by engaging in social dialogue, companies can promote direct relationships with employees, or indirect relationships with them, through elected staff representatives. This study investigates the relationships between companies' involvement in CSR and their engagement in social dialogue, both with employees and elected staff representatives. The results of two surveys, carried out among company representatives and elected staff representatives, indicate that employers do not implement CSR to bypass elected staff representatives. Instead, CSR relates positively to direct relationships with employees and these relationships are not substitutes for dialogue with elected staff representatives, but instead, a factor that can weaken it.

This paper aims to provide a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the current state of ethics and entrepreneurship research by using bibliometric and content analysis. Focusing on 579 papers published between 1988 and 2023, it highlights how recent, unanticipated global challenges—such as the need to combat climate change, ongoing conflicts, and pandemics—have profoundly influenced and revitalized the field. The content analysis reveals that “entrepreneurial ethics” has evolved to encompass a broad range of subtopics and debates. We analyzed the data in four time periods: 1988–2002, 2003–2008, 2009–2016, and 2017–2023 to identify the intellectual foundation of each period and the evolution of the research on the topic. What emerges is that recent research on the societal impact of entrepreneurship has expanded significantly, now covering 11 distinct research areas. This indicates that entrepreneurial ethics has become a widespread theme in entrepreneurship research, rather than an isolated sub-field, with a notable focus on the identities of entrepreneurs, particularly women and family-owned business. Additionally, this paper contributes to the literature on technology entrepreneurship by highlighting the limited attention given to the ethical issues that entrepreneurs face when working with new technologies and innovation, despite major external shifts in the environment. Furthermore, this research reinforces earlier findings that entrepreneurial ethics remains heavily influenced by the principles of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It also highlights the tendency to conflate entrepreneurial ethics with social entrepreneurship, underscoring the need for a more holistic approach to ethics in entrepreneurship research to better understand the interconnectedness of these two domains.

While doing good things, enterprises may also be subject to subjective or unintentional behaviors of doing bad things, and corporate performance is comprehensively affected by its dual social responsibility. Using data from A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, this paper, grounded in signaling theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory, analyzes the dual-path effects, comprehensive effects, and boundary effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) on corporate performance. It innovatively introduces innovation efficiency as a mediating variable to examine its transmission mechanism and pathways in the influence of dual social responsibility on corporate performance. The study finds that CSR and CSIR have independent and heterogeneous effects on corporate performance, with the former exhibiting an inverted U-shaped relationship with corporate performance and the latter consistently exerting a negative impact. The coexistence and interaction of CSR and CSIR have a comprehensive effect on corporate performance, where CSR performance can mitigate the negative impact of CSIR, and there exists a threshold effect. CSR has a nonlinear impact on innovation efficiency, and innovation efficiency plays a significant mediating role in the process of CSR and CSIR affecting corporate performance. The industrial environment competition plays a moderating role in the relationship between a company's dual social behavior and its performance. The higher the industrial environment competition, the more it will accelerate and intensify the negative impact of CSIR on corporate performance. Additionally, it will steepen the inverted U-shaped curve of CSR influencing corporate performance and shift the inflection point to the left. This study not only extends the boundaries of research on the impact of CSIR on corporate performance but also provides insights for corporate social responsibility governance and ethical decision-making in business.