Business Ethics the Environment & Responsibility最新文献

Family firms not only play an important role in economic growth but should also be held partly responsible for environmental degradation. Employing normative stakeholder theory and analyzing unique Chinese survey data via stepwise regression models, our findings indicate that second-generation successors did not significantly impact family firms' environmental investment. However, among second-generation successors, we find that successors with international experience positively impacted environmental investment. The propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage least squares estimation (2SLS) approaches confirm our results. As an interdisciplinary study, our research is of great value to the environmental responsibility and family business literature.

Are female CEOs greener? Few studies have explicitly scrutinised the roles of female CEOs and their political embeddedness in green innovation. In the present work, the influence of female CEOs on green innovation is first examined. Then, the effect of politically embedded female CEOs on green innovation is explored by differentiating female CEOs as those who are and who are not politically embedded, respectively. Furthermore, the moderating effects of external environmental factors on this relationship, namely market competition and market development, are investigated. Using data on China's publicly operated firms from 2008 to 2017, the findings suggest the following: (1) female CEOs negatively affect green innovation; (2) politically embedded female CEOs positively affect green innovation; (3) the positive influence of politically embedded female CEOs on green innovation is strengthened when firms are situated in less competitive industries and more developed markets. This article extends the research and current knowledge base about female CEOs, political embeddedness, and green innovation.

The main objective of this study is to understand the value of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure assurance in the context of the development of sustainable finance standards and laws. This study is based on an analysis of 188 comment letters submitted by such actors in the context of public consultations on the development of three new sustainable finance initiatives (the CFA Institute, the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, and the New Zealand parliament). The study shows these actors' nuanced and often quite critical perceptions of the effectiveness of external assurance in preventing greenwashing and their reservations about its mandatory nature. These actors have raised various criticisms, including concerns about the vagueness surrounding verification practices; the lack of expertise available to conduct assurance in a new, specialized, and complex field; the costs of the assurance process, particularly for small players; and the lack of control over the reliability of the ESG data used. This article contributes to several emerging trends in the literature—in particular, research on governance practices to prevent greenwashing, on the institutionalization of sustainable finance standards and laws, and on the role of rational myths in the assurance process for ESG disclosures.

This study offers a proposal about which competencies should be fostered in organizations to promote a culture in favor of sustainability in line with Pope Francis' encyclical letter Laudato Si. As a result, seven main competencies are proposed, with their interpretation in the light of the encyclical letter, and some suggestions on how to implement them in organizations are presented. The competencies are systemic vision, critical thinking, capacity for dialog, inclusion, proper use of goods, creativity, and spirituality. In addition, the study offers a discussion of the relevance of these competencies in today's business context. This study offers a novelty with respect to other theoretical proposals on competencies for sustainability since it includes competencies that require an authentic concern for other people and for a vision of the human being open to transcendence, thus breaking with instrumentalism and technocratic paradigm that underlies other proposals. In this way, it also offers a new key to interpreting the integral ecology proposed by Pope Francis, which goes beyond other approaches to sustainability in that it includes not only the person–nature relationship but also the person–person and person–transcendence or person–God relationships. The conclusions of this theoretical research can be especially useful for those who intend to promote a culture of sustainability inspired by the Catholic Social Teaching, also making use of the knowledge and good practices of competency-based management.

Science is critical and thrives on discourse. However, new challenges for science and academic freedom have arisen from an often-discussed cancel culture and an increasing demand for safe spaces, which are justified by their assumed protection against microaggressions. These phenomena can impede scientific progress and innovation by prohibiting certain thought processes and heterodox ideas that eventually result in new ideas, publications, statements, etc. In this paper, we use the approach of property rights ethics to shed light on these phenomena, especially in academia. First, we argue that microaggressions must be generally tolerated according to property rights ethics as the starting point for discussion. Then, we analyze cancel culture and safe spaces in academia. To this end, we distinguish between two basic cases in the educational system. We show that cancel culture and safe spaces seem justifiable in a private education system but have no place in public, tax-funded universities from the perspective of property ethics. Our essay contributes, on the one hand, to the economic analysis of science and, on the other hand, to the ethical study of new phenomena in modern societies.

In this research, we analyse the impact of the inclusion of ethical expressions in the prospectuses of socially responsible (SR) mutual funds on money flows. We contribute to the existing literature by proposing a text-based measure that integrates three attributes that are relevant to whether clients are attracted: exclusiveness, intensity and lexical diversity. We analyse a sample formed of 266 SR US equity mutual funds in the period 1999–2019. Our findings show that both the proposed indicator and other alternative partial proxies based on textual data have a positive impact on the money flows of the SR funds. This effect is more relevant in the case of SR mutual funds belonging to smaller families. Besides, persistence in money flows is more intense for SR mutual funds that are more attractive because of their ethical expressions. Another finding shows that return-chaser behaviour occurs among all SR investors, independently of the level of text attractiveness of the mutual funds in which they invest, revealing that they take into account both financial and non-financial outcomes. Our results indicate that policymakers should control fund prospectus information, given its importance for investors' decisions. In addition, managers should be especially cautious with the information provided in prospectuses because of its impact on investor decisions.

Preventing firms from engaging in greenwashing is a topic of significant theoretical and practical interest. This study examines the impact of penalties for environmental violations (PEVs) on mitigating greenwashing using a dataset of firms listed on China's A-share market operating in heavily polluting industries from 2014 to 2020. We also examine how firm-level characteristics moderate the relationship between PEVs and greenwashing. Our results demonstrate that PEVs can deter firms from engaging in greenwashing and that this negative effect is more pronounced for firms with greater financial slack, effective internal controls and political connections. Additional analysis indicates that PEVs have a negative effect on greenwashing for firms in the growth and mature stages but not for firms in the ‘shake-out’ stage, and that there is a deterrence effect. Our findings have important implications for mitigating greenwashing behaviours through collaboration between governments and firms.

This study explores an important yet understudied relationship between CEO narcissism and green innovation, both separately and when moderated by CEO demographic traits (international experience and age). We analyzed a sample of 206 U.S.-listed firms on the S&P 500 over a 10-year period. Our initial findings indicate a negative association between CEO narcissism and green innovation. However, further analysis reveals that this relationship is influenced by two CEO demographic traits. Specifically, CEOs' international experience and age mitigate the initially negative link between CEO narcissism and green innovation. These results align with insights from the upper echelon theory, shedding light on the dark side of narcissism. The implications of our findings extend to firms' team management, directors, policy-makers, and regulators.

One of the most difficult supply network challenges facing companies today is how to diffuse sustainability not only among their direct (first-tier) suppliers but also throughout their supply networks. Although a growing body of research has been dedicated to addressing this challenge, the role of purchasing and supply management (PSM) in sustainable supply network development remains underexplored. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the literature on the role of PSM in the diffusion of sustainability in supply networks. We analysed 133 peer-reviewed papers published in 21 journals in the field of PSM. We scrutinized the theories, methods and levels of analysis used in sustainable PSM research, classified the practices for diffusing sustainability in supply networks and identified the role of PSM in the diffusion of sustainability. Accordingly, we put forward a set of propositions that link diffusion practices—and the role of PSM in these practices—with embedded and peripheral sustainability and suggest future research directions.

This study examines the job postings for open innovation (OI) specialists to determine a universal archetype of what competencies and tasks are requested from said professionals and their implications for corporate sustainability and responsibility. This research uses Bayesian statistics and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling to measure multiple dimensions of the 341 sampled job postings. Our empirical findings unveil the pivotal role that OI specialists have in engaging with stakeholders and monitoring OI dynamics. Multiple dimensions are expected from OI specialists, addressing a multitude of concerns, such as the environment and technologies. Moreover, this study underlines the need for OI specialists to comprehend both internal and external stakeholders' needs. This research contributes to the literature as follows. First, it underlines the value of topic modeling analysis in job profiling research. Second, it bridges existing knowledge gaps on OI specialists' competencies and roles with empirical evidence obtained from a global dataset. Third, it outlines the current market expectations and requirements for OI specialists, which is useful to both candidates and companies.