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Higher education institutions (HEIs) are critical in the sustainability agenda, not only as catalysts for promoting sustainability practices but also because their activities have substantial social, economic and environmental impacts. Yet there is limited research that examines their sustainability performance. This paper aims to investigate the factors that are associated with sustainability performance in HEIs. Specifically, drawing from the stakeholder theory and exploiting Ullmann’s (1985) conceptual framework, this study examines the association between sustainability performance and stakeholder power, strategic posture and financial slack resources.

The authors draw the sample from the People & Planet University Green League Table for the period 2011–2019 and use the generalised estimating equations for the modelling approach.

This study finds that stakeholder power, in particular, funding grant income, tuition fee income and student and staff numbers, are positively associated with sustainability performance. In relation to strategic posture, this study finds that sustainability performance is negatively associated with governing body independence and gender diversity, and positively associated with internal structures. Finally, regarding financial slack resources, this study finds that surplus income (staff costs) is positively (negatively) associated with sustainability performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research contributes to several existing literature focusing on the not-for-profit sector by documenting, for the first time, the role of stakeholder power, strategic posture and slack financial resources on sustainability performance.

The paper includes relevant implications for HEI managers and regulators for promoting sustainability.

These results contribute to the literature on the factors influencing sustainability performance.

This paper examines the impact of founder ownership concentration (FOC) on risk disclosures. It further investigates the moderating role of risk governance in the association between FOC and risk disclosures.

We use data from the top 200 Indian listed firms as our sample and rely on ordinary least squares (OLS) for our results. In addition, we use the propensity score matching, Heckman selection model and instrumental variable estimates for robustness checks.

We find that FOC decreases the risk disclosures. However, the effectiveness of risk management committee composition (risk governance) mitigates the negative influence of FOC on risk disclosures.

The paper is built on the agency theory. Based on the agency theory, the ownership concentration has two implications: first, it reduces the conflicts between managers and shareholders. Here, the managers act in favour of shareholders and therefore, brings more risk disclosers. Second, it invites conflicts between controlling and minority shareholders. The study is, therefore, interesting to see the cost and benefits of FOC on risk disclosures.

The study has practical implications for the regulatory bodies to encourage risk disclosures and benefit the outsiders of the firm. It also has implications for the companies to see the benefits of risk management committee as improved risk governance.

It contributes to the literature of risk disclosures and risk governance in emerging economies. It is the first study to investigate the role of risk governance in mitigating the adverse effects of founder’s ownership on risk disclosures in developing economies. It also contributes to the theory of agency cost and information asymmetry.

Reacting to the calls in the contemporary literature to further examine the relationship between board attributes and firms’ decisions to obtain corporate social responsibility assurance (CSRA) through the use of pioneering techniques, this study aims to analyse the influence of such attributes together with the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee on the adoption of CSRA using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (Fs-QCA).

Fs-QCA was performed on a sample of nonfinancial European companies listed on the STOXX Europe 600 index over the period 2016–2018.

The study findings indicate that the decision to obtain a CSRA report depends on a complex combination of the influence of the CSR committee and certain board attributes, such as size, experience, independence, meeting frequency, gender and CEO separation. These attributes play essential contributing roles and, if suitably combined, stimulate the adoption of CSRA.

The study findings are important for policymakers, professionals, organisations and regulators in forming and modifying the rules and guidelines related to CSR committees and board composition.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first examination of the impact of board attributes and CSR committees on the adoption of CSRA using Fs-QCA method. It also offers a novel methodological contribution to the board-CSRA literature by combining traditional statistical (logistic regression) and Fs-QCA methods. This study emphasises the benefits of Fs-QCA as an alternative to logistic regression analysis. Through the use of these methods, the research illustrates that Fs-QCA offers more detailed and informative results when compared to those obtained through logistic regression analysis. This finding highlights the potential of Fs-QCA to enhance our understanding of complex phenomena in academic research.

This study aims to explore whether firms that have a sustainability committee operating on the board, publish separate sustainability reports that are externally assured by an independent external audit and have large and active boards are more likely to be engaged in environmental practices and have better environmental performance.

Based on a sample of firms listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange, covering the period 2014–2021, this study applies panel data models to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings show significant positive associations between the existence of a sustainability committee, the publication of separate sustainability reports and the independent external assurance of these reports and environmental performance. This study also finds that the composite internal governance index is significant and positively associated with environmental performance.

Policymakers should support the creation of a sustainability committee on the boards of Saudi firms and review its role and responsibilities. The findings of this study inform regulators of the importance of the existence of independent external assurance of the sustainability reports of Saudi firms to enhance the credibility and reliability of these reports. Managers need to establish devoted committees committed to sustainability-related tasks that help coordinate communications between the firm and stakeholders.

The Saudi Arabian Government has implemented a range of policies and initiatives aimed at improving environmental performance, which is a main focus of Saudi Vision 2030 to achieve environmental sustainability. Therefore, this study provides unique evidence and new insights on the impact of internal governance on corporate environmental performance in the Saudi context.

Sustainability development goals (SDGs) cannot be achieved without a concerted effort from businesses and other organisations, being the corporate level is one of the keys to the achievement of SDGs. This study aims to explore the relationship between firms' adoption of SDG reporting in China and two main corporate-level factors, namely, board characteristics and ownership factors. Also, this study aims to determine which set of drivers – those related to board or ownership factors – exerts a greater influence on this reporting.

This research examines the impact of ownership and board-level factors on the SDG reporting of Chinese firms in the period 2016–2018, with a final sample of 455 firm-year observations operating in 11 activity sectors.

The results support the following: firstly, that board independence and size and the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee favours firms addressing SDGs in their sustainability reporting while greater levels of foreign or institutional ownership are negatively related to a company's adoption of SDG reporting; secondly, two-stage logit regression results revealed that board-level factors exert greater explanatory power in the prediction of this reporting and have bigger weights in affecting the SDGs reporting.

This study focuses on assessing the drivers of SDGs; namely, what internal factors will facilitate companies' better implementation of SDG reporting to bridge the gap in this field, not only extending the investigation of corporate governance factors affecting SDGs but also examining the impact of corporate ownership on SDG reporting.

This study enriches and provides support for previous studies examining the drivers of SDGs in the private sector. In academia, addressing SDGs in business is still an emerging research stream that is still in an embryonic state; the reporting of SDGs in business is quite under-investigated in the sustainability literature. Moreover, literature on the drivers that promote better implementation of SDGs in business is even more scarce and incomplete. Some previous studies have ignored the impact of board size and the CSR committee. At the same time, there is no research to date on the impact of ownership on companies' SDGs reporting, which has been proved to play a large role in firms sustainability reporting.

Despite the extensive body of research on absolute corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, limited attention has been given to the distinct concepts of optimal and aggressive CSR engagement, as well as their associations with CSR awarding. This study aims to differentiate between optimal and aggressive CSR engagement and examine their relationship with CSR awarding while considering the moderating influence of board characteristics from the perspectives of stakeholder and agency theories.

This empirical analysis draws on an international dataset comprising 43,803 observations from nine sectors across 41 countries. We employ a least squares dummy variable regression approach that accounts for country, industry and year effects to conduct the analysis.

The results reveal that engagement in aggressive CSR activities beyond the optimal level leads to the generation of a social reputation through CSR awarding. However, the influence of board characteristics on this relationship is significant. Specifically, the presence of a dedicated CSR committee encourages CSR awarding in the context of aggressive CSR engagement. Conversely, board independence constrains the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and CSR awarding. Notably, board gender diversity does not have a discernible impact on this connection.

Our evidence provides valuable insights to help firms seeking to enhance their social reputation through CSR activities better allocate their resources and avoid unnecessary financial commitments.

This study advances the current understanding by exploring the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and the recognition of CSR awards. Furthermore, it scrutinises the factors that dictate when such aggressive CSR engagement translates into enhanced social reputation, as evidenced by the attainment of CSR awards.

This paper aims to examine the role of social auditing in legitimising the relationship between the buyer and supplier firms rather than strengthening corporate accountability in the global supply chain.

Applying case study methodology and drawing on Suchman’s theory on societal legitimacy, it is argued that social audits are artefacts of legitimacy, and global firms dominate the buyer–supplier relationship across the supply chain. The analysis is based on data collected from different secondary sources, including Walmart’s corporate sustainability reports.

Using Walmart’s relationship with Tazreen Fashions Limited around the Tazreen factory fire incident as a case study, it explains that the practices which attempt to symbolically demonstrate accountability from social audits need to shift to a more continuous and sincere demonstration of accountability through the social audit process. For this to occur, the cognitive and pragmatic approaches that international buyers have previously used in auditing their supply firms’ social responsibility are no longer sufficient to achieve societal legitimacy. Instead, a moral turn needs to underpin the intentions and actions of these buyers to maintain legitimacy and demonstrate accountability across the supply industry in developing economies.

The findings of the study answer the questions raised in the extant literature about the expectation from social auditing and whether social auditing serves to ensure corporate accountability. The paper contributes to the policymaking discussion of how social auditing can be configured to include a legal provision to ensure that social auditing is not a parroting tool for corporations.

Linguists classify the world’s languages into two types: futured and futureless. Futured languages (e.g. French) require speakers to grammatically mark future events, a construction that is optional in futureless languages such as German. This treatise examines whether the grammatical structure of the predominant language in a given country explains firms’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices. This is expected to happen because a speaker’s future time perspective and temporal discounting vary depending on the type of language used.

The sample period for this research was from 2001 to 2020. The sample of the study consists of 5,275 firms representing 47 countries. The sample is comprised of firms from 29 countries where the predominant language is a strong future time reference (FTR) language and 18 countries with a weak-FTR language. The maximum number of firm-country-year observations of the study was 39,956. This study employed multi-level mixed effects modelling as well as other relevant estimation techniques such as random effect panel regression, ordinary least square regression and two-stage least square regression.

This research empirically demonstrates that firms based in countries where the predominant language requires speakers to grammatically differentiate between the present and the future – known as strong-FTR or futured languages – engage more often in controversial marketing- and environment-related practices than those located in countries where the predominant language does not necessarily require grammatical differentiation between the present and the future (known as weak-FTR or futureless languages).

The findings are important for managers of firms with foreign subsidiary operations: top management teams of such firms need to be aware that their foreign subsidiaries’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices varies depending on the predominant language those subsidiaries use. Also, firms located in countries with weak-FTR languages need to be more rigorous in their selection process when considering forming a joint venture or acquiring a firm in countries with strong-FTR languages.

The current research enriches the burgeoning body of literature on the effect of language on corporate decision-making. It extends the body of knowledge on the impact of language structure on firms’ inclination to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices.

By providing a critical analysis of a recent literature review concerning environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) research in finance which was published in the Journal of Corporate Finance (Gillan et al., 2021), examining it in the light of several reviews on the same or similar lines of research, this paper aims to serve those who wish to do research in the CSR/ESG/corporate sustainability and the reporting thereof areas in finance.

This note serves to comment on Gillan et al.’s review.

Irrespective of the merits of the review, it should not be used by newcomers to the research on CSR in corporate finance given that it provides a very biased view of it.

This commentary serves the purpose of cautioning those interested in becoming acquainted with CSR-related research in corporate finance that the review on which it focuses should be used only as an entry point, given that it offers an incomplete and biased picture.