Despite 40 years of research on the relationship between corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP), there is no generally accepted theoretical framework that explains the contradictory results that have emerged. This unsatisfactory status may be attributed to the fact that linear models dominate the research. Based on an international sample of 2361 firm-years from 2008 to 2012, we find empirical evidence of a non-linear, specifically a U-shaped, relationship between carbon performance and profitability as well as between waste intensity and profitability. The same result holds for the relationship between carbon performance and stock market performance, but solely for manufacturing industries. Our empirical findings provide evidence for the theoretical framework of a 'too-little-of-a-good-thing' (TLGT) effect, which indicates that the type of relationship (positive, negative) depends on the level of CEP. More precisely, there is a negative CEP-CFP relationship for companies with low CEP and a positive association for high CEP. 1 In prior research, CEP is often analyzed in the context of corporate social performance (CSP) or described as a subdimension of CSP (see the metaanalysis of Orlitzky et al., 2003). We explicitly concentrate on CEP because CEP is clearly distinct from CSP (Bansal and Gao, 2006). More precisely, there are different firm capabilities, regulations, reporting standards and investment requirements (Walls et al., 2012). Furthermore, empirical research with regard to the CEP/CSP-CFP link demonstrates different results for CEP and CSP (e.g. Scholtens and Zhou, 2008;Schreck, 2011).

Boards of directors affect corporate strategy and decision-making through monitoring of management and resource provision. Recently, an increasing number of studies have examined the relationships between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). These studies have yielded inconsistent findings. This article therefore reports the results of a study applying meta-analytical techniques to a sample of 82 empirical studies to help clarify the relationships between board characteristics and CSR. Although prior research has tended to apply relatively simplistic models investigating the impact of individual board characteristics independently and only directly, we adopt a more complex perspective to shed new light on the board characteristics–CSR nexus. Specifically, we use a meta-analytic path model that accounts for the potential interplay between board characteristics in determining CSR and tests whether the presence of a CSR committee plays a meditating role. Our findings suggest that board size, board independence, and female board representation are partially interrelated with each other and jointly influence CSR directly as well as indirectly via the presence of a CSR committee. In addition, we find that country-level institutional factors act as moderators and that the relationships differ with regard to the specific dimension of CSR (i.e., social, environmental, or aggregate).

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