Board Gender Diversity, Female Leaders and Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Structured Literature Review

Abstract

Purpose—Nowadays, there is an increasing social, economic, and regulatory pressure on firms to improve their corporate environmental performance (CEP). CEP is an important subset of the overall corporate social responsibility and refers to the specific efforts firms undertake to save energy and decrease pollution as well as to the activities geared towards promoting environmental protection. In view of the increased attention to corporate environmental responsibility, scholars have begun to explore the potential drivers of CEP including board gender diversity (BGD) and female representation in management. Researchers assume that female directors and managers are more sensitive to environmental issues and care more about the needs of other stakeholders beyond shareholders. However, the empirical research has yielded mixed results. Some studies show that firms with greater BGD or female leadership have a better CEP, while others find no significant association or even a negative one. The purpose of this chapter is to review and systematize the empirical literature on board gender diversity, female leaders and CEP and to outline an agenda for future research. Methodology—We first conducted a Scopus search to take stock of the empirical works on gender diversity and CEP, then we analyzed relevant articles using the SRL methodology combined with an in-depth content analysis, in order to identify the main research topics and the major existing gaps. Findings—The existing research has focused on four main thematic areas: (1) Board gender diversity, female leaders and environmental performance; (2) Board gender diversity, female leaders and environmental disclosure; (3) Board gender diversity, female leaders and environmental innovation; and (4) Board gender diversity and female leaders as moderating factors between corporate environmental performance and corporate financial performance. This literature has tended to focus on the direct effect of gender diversity on CEP, but relatively few studies have investigated the contingencies factors that may affect this association. Future research should explore the boundary conditions of this linkage at different levels of analysis (i.e., at organizational, institutional, and individual levels) so as to reconcile previous inconsistent findings. Also, research has not thoroughly analyzed the mediating mechanisms of the effect of gender diversity on CEP. Further studies should fill this void as well. In terms of empirical strategies, the vast majority of studies employ quantitative research methods and assume a linear relationship between gender diversity and environmental performance. Future research should also explore the potential curvilinear effects of gender diversity and employ more qualitative and mixed-methods approaches. Originality—To the best of our knowledge, there are no structured literature reviews that comprehensively examine this empirical literature.