Thursday, 4 May 2017

Corporate boards and environmental offence conviction: evidence from the United Kingdom

an article by Venancio Tauringana (University of Southampton, UK), Dragana Radicic (University of Cambridge, UK) and Alan Kirkpatrick and Renata Konadu (Bournemouth University, UK) published in Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society Volume 17 Issue 2 (2017)

Abstract

Purpose
This paper aims to report the results of an investigation into the relationship between corporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the United Kingdom (UK).

Design/methodology/approach
The study uses binary logistics regression analysis to model the relationship between corporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the UK, controlling for firm size, financial leverage and profitability.

Findings
The results suggest that the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence increases with board size but decreases with the presence of a woman on the board. No support is found for the authors’ hypotheses about the proportion of outside directors and the presence of a lawyer on the board. Marginal effects’ results also show that adding one member to the board increases the chance of a firm being convicted for an environmental offence by 4.2 per cent, while having a woman on the board decreases the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence by 31.8 per cent.

Research limitations/implications
The sample size of 55 firms is small which could affect the generalisability of the study.

Originality/value
The study uses proprietary data obtained from the UK Environmental Agency to provide evidence for the first time how corporate boards affect the chances of a listed firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the UK.


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