Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Legal Origins Perspective

In this study, we examine the determinants of corporate environmental responsibility (CER), as well as the relationship between legal systems and CER as measured by a unique set of global environmental cost data. Results of our analyses show that firms’ legal origins affect CER, which requires a lon...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics
Authors: Kim, Hakkon (Author) ; Park, Kwangwoo (Author) ; Ryu, Doojin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2017
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2017, Volume: 140, Issue: 3, Pages: 381-402
Further subjects:B Managerial ownership
B Corporate environmental responsibility (CER)
B Legal origins
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:In this study, we examine the determinants of corporate environmental responsibility (CER), as well as the relationship between legal systems and CER as measured by a unique set of global environmental cost data. Results of our analyses show that firms’ legal origins affect CER, which requires a long-term management perspective. Specifically, our results indicate that civil law firms exhibit significantly higher levels of CER than common law firms. In addition, results of an auxiliary test suggest that manager shareholding has a significant, nonlinear relationship with CER. The association between a firm’s legal origin and its CER performance remains robust after controlling for the effects of managerial ownership and issues related to endogeneity. Our findings imply that although the majority of corporate law studies in the past few decades provide support for the common law system emphasizing the maximization of shareholder value and investor protection, the civil law system stressing the maximization of stakeholder wealth and the importance of CER may become more influential in the coming decades as CER becomes central to firms’ operations.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-2641-1