Sustainable Development Goals are setting a new global target on sustainability, for which corporates are expected to play an important role through sustainable practices. One of the approaches to engaging corporate to sustainable practices focuses on the board composition. The literature shows that the composition of board influences corporate's financial performance. However, the relationships between the composition of boards and corporate's sustainability practices are not empirically examined. This study empirically analyzes whether the composition of the Board of Directors affects firms' sustainability performance. Specifically, the analysis focuses on key corporate governance characteristics – namely board diversity, board independence and CEO duality – and seeks to assess the effect they have on social and environmental sustainability components. Hypotheses are developed based on the agency theory and stakeholder theory. Using a system generalized method of moment two-step estimator, with data from Sustainalytics and Compustat databases for 362 firms in 46 different countries, we find that firms with more diversity on the board and a separation between chair and CEO roles show higher sustainability performance. Moreover, our findings reveal that a higher number of independent directors leads to lower sustainability performance. This study contributes to the literature on corporate governance and the firm's performance by demonstrating that the composition of the board of directors affects the firm's sustainability performance.

中文翻译：

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公司治理和董事会：董事会组成对公司可持续发展绩效的影响


可持续发展目标正在制定新的全球可持续发展目标，企业应通过可持续实践在这一目标中发挥重要作用。让企业参与可持续实践的方法之一侧重于董事会的组成。文献表明，董事会的构成影响企业的财务绩效。然而，董事会的组成与企业可持续发展实践之间的关系并未得到实证检验。本研究实证分析了董事会的构成是否影响企业的可持续发展绩效。具体而言，该分析侧重于关键的公司治理特征，即董事会多元化、董事会独立性和首席执行官双重性，并试图评估它们对社会和环境可持续性组成部分的影响。假设是基于代理理论和利益相关者理论提出的。使用矩两步估计器的系统广义方法，并利用 Sustainalytics 和 Compustat 数据库中 46 个不同国家的 362 家公司的数据，我们发现董事会更加多元化以及董事长和首席执行官角色分离的公司表现出更高的可持续发展绩效。此外，我们的研究结果表明，独立董事人数越多，可持续发展绩效就越低。本研究通过证明董事会的组成影响公司的可持续发展绩效，为有关公司治理和公司绩效的文献做出了贡献。