Corporate governance scholars are increasingly interested in firms' social and environmental performance. Empirical research in this area, however, has moved forward in an uncoordinated fashion, producing fragmented and contradictory results. Our paper seeks to address this situation by adopting a fact-based research approach that comprehensively explores the link between corporate governance and environmental performance. Specifically, we aim to understand how the relationships between and among the firm's owners, managers and board of directors influence environmental performance. We are particularly interested in understanding the interactions among these three key sets of actors. In the end, we offer some observations about governance practices and discuss the implications for theory.

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By examining the level of ownership concentration across firms, we determine how principal-principal conflict, defined as the incongruence of ownership goals among shareholder groups in a corporation, impacts agency costs of Chinese boards of directors. Based on data from Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during 1999-2003, we found that ownership concentration had a U-shaped relationship with board compensation, board size and the presence of independent directors. These results provide corroborating evidence that principal-principal conflict can lead to high agency costs.

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