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The aim of this research is to examine the effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance and the role of agency costs and business risk in determining this effect.

This study uses the data of 83 non-financial Turkish firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2014–2021. Two-step system GMM models are applied to examine the study’s hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance, and that this effect is significant only for firms that are more likely to suffer agency costs of equity, firms with R&D expenditures and firms with lower business risk.

The results of this study confirm the importance of regulations introduced by regulators to support the sustainability initiatives for firms that have less ability to access funds required for their investments. In addition, the findings provide important insight into the role of the persistence of corporate sustainability performance in enhancing financial performance through mitigating managers' opportunistic behavior.

To the author’s knowledge, this research is one of few that examine the effect of agency costs and business risk on the corporate sustainability–financial performance relationship in emerging markets.

This study aims to investigate whether board gender diversity is associated with corporate sustainability performance and whether industry-level product market competition moderates the effect of board gender diversity on corporate sustainability performance.

This study uses international data extracted from global ESG data set from Thomson Reuters (Refinitiv) database. Using data of 23,137 firm-year observations from 37 countries, the authors perform regression analyses to examine the hypotheses.

The findings show that firms with high board gender diversity exhibit high corporate sustainability performance. The authors also find firms in highly competitive industries to have low corporate sustainability performance. In highly competitive industries, the positive relationship between board gender diversity and corporate sustainability performance is weakened. The results are robust to various specification tests such as alternative measures for corporate sustainability performance, board gender diversity, product market competition and also the use of propensity score matching to address endogeneity issue. Overall, the results support the prediction that board diversity and product market competition play a substitutive role in influencing corporate sustainability performance.

This study offers empirical evidence that the appointment of female directors is a useful way to improve a firm’s corporate sustainability performance, hence, providing significant benefits in terms of stakeholders’ values and corporate reputation.

This study provides useful insights to investors and policymakers that intense industry competition might mitigate the role of board governance, particularly board gender diversity, in enhancing corporate sustainability performance.

Using an international data set, where the observations operate in various market and institutional differences, this study is able to extricate the positive impact of board gender diversity and product market competition on corporate sustainability performance. This study corroborates evidence that sustainability strategy and initiatives are reflections of integrated factors, including corporate governance as internal driver and market forces faced by firms as external driver.

The past years have seen more studies exploring corporate sustainability performance (CSP) and firm performance nexus, but there has been a lack of analysis using bibliometric studies. This study aims to provide a structure for the CSP-firm performance relationship to gain valuable insights for further research.

Bibliometric analysis was carried on 462 articles from the Scopus database spanning 1987–2022 using VOSviewer and R software Bibliometrix.

The study overviews the most notable articles, authors, journals, countries and institutions. Four main clusters are identified to determine research themes using bibliographic coupling (documents). Additionally, co-occurrence analysis (keywords) reveals three themes indicating current and future research trends.

The study presents an overview of the evolution of research on CSP-firm performance nexus. This work consolidates bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review on CSP and firm performance, covering all significant work on the topic and presenting the field's knowledge map and future research directions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of corporate sustainability reporting on firm performance in four Asian countries – Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and India – and to find out whether there is any significant difference between developed and developing countries of Asia with respect to the impact of such reporting on firm performance.

The study is based on 36 listed nonfinancial companies from Japan, 28 from India, 26 from South Korea and 21 from Indonesia respectively, from 2009 to 2014. Content analysis (binary −0 and 1) is used to calculate the disclosure score of sustainability performance, based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) format. The outcome of the content analysis is further used to examine the impact of corporate sustainability reporting on firm performance employing a logistic regression model.

The study finds that the average level of disclosure is more in the case of Japanese companies (90 per cent), followed by India (88 per cent) and South Korea (85 per cent). On the other hand, the average level of disclosure is only 72 per cent for Indonesian firms. Regression results depict a significant positive association between sustainability reporting and firm’s performance. The study further finds that the relative impact of sustainability reporting on firm performance is more in developed countries than in developing countries of Asia.

This is the first comprehensive study in Asian context to examine the impact of the level of corporate sustainability disclosure on the firm performance by using the logistic regression model. The outcome of this study would not only help the corporate managers but also the policymakers to make a valuable decision, which will eventually contribute to the objectives of sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the disclosure pattern of corporate sustainability (CS) and the influence of sustainability reporting on firm performance of four countries in Asia – Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and India.

The authors have collected the sustainability reports and annual reports of 111 firms from four Asian countries for a period of six years. Based on the framework of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI, 3 and 3.1), content analysis is used for calculating the disclosure score of corporate sustainability performance (CSP). These scores are further used to examine the impact on firm performance by employing a panel data regression model.

The study finds that the average level and quality of disclosure are the highest for Japanese firms, followed by India and South Korea. However, in the case of Indonesia, the average score is very low. Further, the study finds a significant difference in the disclosure of overall sustainability as well as components of sustainability between the countries. The regression results indicate the positive impact of CSP (both in terms of level and quality) on MBR. Specifically, the outcome of the regression model reveals that both the level and quality disclosure of CS are crucial for enhancing firm value for both the developed and developing countries of Asia. Moreover, the relative influence of CSP (both in terms of level and quality) on firm performance is found to be more in developed countries than the developing countries of Asia.

This is the first comprehensive study in the Asian context to investigate the disclosure pattern of CSP and also examine the association between CSP and firm performance by employing the panel data model. The outcome of this study is useful for policy implication.

Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing interest on corporate social responsibility by a number of constituencies – corporate managers, research scholars, policymakers and investors. In this context, corporate sustainability performance (CSP) has been a central focus of attention. This paper aims to analyze CSP determinants in Brazil, an important emerging market. Firm CSP is proxied by the membership to the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) which comprises environmental, social, economic and governance issues.

Logit panel data models are estimated for a sample of 2,685 firm-year observations in the period of 2006-2015.

Results show that firms operating in environmental risky industries tend to be leading CSP firms in Brazil which might be a positive consequence of the Brazilian environmental legislation that could be forcing such firms to be more committed to environmental issues. High ownership concentration reduces the probability of a firm’s membership to the ISE index signaling that large controlling blockholders may not see sustainability and governance concerns as relevant. Larger Brazilian firms and the ones with more growth opportunities tend to be CSP leaders. Additionally, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 had a negative effect on CSP in Brazil.

The implications of the present findings may be of interest to academics and firms’ stakeholders. The fact that firms from environmental risky industries exhibit higher concerns with CSP, probably because of the Brazilian environmental rules that has advanced in the past decades, show the prominence of policymakers in the critical scenario of environmental issues. When designing regulation, policymakers should be conscious of the importance of social issues and pay attention to all ways available to foster firm sustainability concerns. The additional evidence that dominant shareholders do not appear to see CSP as a relevant concern in Brazil points out an agency conflict in which large blockholders’ interests may be prevailing over other stakeholders’ interests. That is important to academics who study the role played by ownership structure on firm’s policies. Furthermore, larger firms, as well as the ones with more growth opportunities, seem to invest in CSP, possibly for seeing it as a way to generate competitive advantage.

As per the authors’ knowledge this is the first paper to point out the relevance of industry environmental sensitivity over firm’s commitment to sustainability issues in Brazil. Additional evidence is provided on the negative effect of ownership concentration on the probability of firm’s membership to the ISE sustainability index using a longer period as well as robust logit panel data model estimates compared to previous studies. Unlike previous works, the paper analyzes the complexity of a sustainability index in the Brazilian market. Such index comprises corporate social responsibility, sustainability and corporate governance concerns. This set of concerns makes it a complex index and requires a deeper rationale for the determinants of CSP as proxied by the membership to it, under the stakeholder and agency theoretical frameworks.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of accounting information quality (AIQ) and firm risk on the corporate sustainability performance (CSP) of Turkish listed firms.

This study used data of 70 firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2014–2019. Binary and ordinal logistic regression models are used to examine the factors affecting CSP as proxied by the membership to BIST Sustainability Index.

The results of this research indicate that AIQ is negatively related to CSP in firms with severe agency problem. The results also show a significant negative relationship between accounting earnings volatility and CSP. However, the effect of stock return volatility on CSP is not significant. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the possibility of being a member of Turkish sustainability index is higher for larger firms, firms that are included in BIST Corporate Governance Index and firms with high leverage, more research and development (R&D) intensity and high brand value.

The results of this study provide implications for policymakers, investors and firms about the role of firm characteristics in determining CSP.

To the author's knowledge, this study is the first to explore the effect of AIQ and firm risk on CSP in the Turkish context.

The purpose of this paper is to look into the sustainability practices of Indian firms in terms of the quality of disclosure, the impact of corporate sustainability performance (CSP) on firm performance and the appropriateness of the sustainability reporting guidelines followed by the firms.

The present study is based on secondary data collected from annual reports and corporate sustainability reports of 28 listed Indian non-financial firms from 2008-2009 to 2013-2014. Content analysis is used to calculate the score in terms of level (binary coding system) and quality of disclosure (four-point scale). These scores are further used to examine the impact of CSP on firm performance by using an appropriate regression model.

The study finds that the average level of disclosure is 88 per cent, whereas the quality of disclosure is nearly 80 per cent. The influence of CSP (in terms of level and quality disclosure) on firm performance is positive and significant. Moreover, the study also reveals that the Global Reporting Initiatives framework is not sufficient enough to publish the sustainability report of any business concern. The outcomes of the study, thus, indicate that sustainability practices of Indian firms are not myth but approaching toward reality.

It is the first comprehensive study in India to analyze the corporate sustainability reporting practices encompassing different dimensions of sustainability.

This study aims to examine how chief executive officer's (CEO) personality traits influence the corporate sustainability performance (CSP) of firms. The paper also examines the moderating effect of board power on this relationship.

Using a linguistic tool (IBM's Watson Personality Insight Service), the authors measured the personality traits of 229 CEOs from 176 firms from 2009 to 2018. Firm-level CSP are obtained from the Sustainalytics database. The hypotheses are tested using multiple regression analysis. The robustness of the results of the study is confirmed by addressing endogeneity concerns and by validating the measurement of CEO personality traits using Personality Recognizer, an alternative linguistic tool.

The results show that CEO personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism are significant predictors of CSP. The paper also identifies board power as a contingent factor that influences the suggested relationships.

Using upper echelon theory and cybernetic big five theory, this paper identifies CEO personality traits as important antecedents of corporate sustainability performance and adds to the micro-foundations of corporate sustainability literature. To the authors’ understanding, this is the first study that examines the influence of CEO personality on CSP using a comprehensive trait framework. The paper also demonstrates the usefulness of text-analytic tools to measure CEO personality traits, thereby contributing to the progress of upper echelon theory.

Corporate sustainability is an evolutionary strategic management concept that has now attained much attention both in literature and practice. In the present globalization and digital age, the competitive strengths of technology management (TM) and TQM practices are widely accepted but to what extent these strategies can interact and impact the sustainability performance is unknown. The purpose of this paper is to portray the significant role of TM and TQM in pursuing corporate sustainability performance (CSP) and to investigate their integrated relationship as a common framework.

This is a survey-based empirical research that has been carried out by means of development of a survey questionnaire and its distribution to multifaceted business organizations in a developing country. Random sampling technique was used for the data collection from companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP). Response from 209 companies was found useful for analysis in the study. After confirming the questionnaire items for reliability and validity (content, criterion-related and construct validity) correlation, regression, factor analysis, path analysis and mediation analysis were performed through SPSS and AMOS to assess the composition and causal association of factors.

Statistical results show that TQM does not only significantly impact CSP but also has an impact on each CSP dimension (economical, social and environmental sustainability performance), whereas TM has an insignificant direct effect on CSP and impacts economical sustainability dimension only. From nine hypotheses, two hypotheses are rejected suggesting that TM does not directly impact social and environmental sustainability. However, when mediation analysis was run by taking TQM as a mediator, the total effect of TM on CSP found significant suggesting that TQM significantly impacts the relationship.

Paucity of response data can be a limitation for such empirical research. Due to practical limitations and risks in the data presentation of mixed cultural dimensions, the data was collected only from in country organizations. Moreover, respondents in the local country do not keenly participate in such surveys because of a gap between the industry and academia.

The study attempts to examine the practice and performance levels of CSP, TQM and TM among multi industries, thereby, extending a better understanding of the prevailing situation with regards to these concepts in a developing country. Though the results of the study confine local inferences but the findings can be generalized to other part of the world if further research is carried out with more data.

The study outcomes draw the attention of the country’s executive leadership and the industrial boards toward the implementation of the most top-ranked agenda of sustainability performance in connection to quality and TM practices. One of the major findings reveals that local organizations are primarily more focused toward economical sustainability dimension, however, benefits of economical stability can be improvised to attain environmental and social sustainability performances with desired concentration on technology advancement and TQM culture and practice.

The study is unique in the prescribed scope which has been carried out in a developing country with focus on strategic concepts, and their interacted relationship, of CSP, TQM and TM in form of proposed research framework. This framework can be used or further investigated for validation, by practitioners and managers working to lead sustainability management in respective areas.