Attendant, autonomous, audacious, and advisory boards: Catalyzing corporate environmental performance

Abstract

AbstractBoards of directors play important roles when responding to one of the biggest challenges for companies today: environmental sustainability. Research has mainly been focused on the separate impacts of board structure, composition, and processes on corporate environmental performance. Understanding how these three dimensions of the board, which help to successfully fulfill the board roles, interact in complementary or substitutive ways is crucial for improving companies' environmental performance. Using a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 86 European‐listed companies in greenhouse gas (GHG)‐intensive sectors, our study shows that board dimensions and the attributes that shape them have complementary or substitutable effects on corporate environmental performance. Specifically, we identified four board archetypes that arise from different configurations promoting environmental performance. Finally, we considered CEO‐Board interaction, showing that both longer and shorter CEO tenures together with certain combinations of board attributes could be linked to higher environmental performance.