This study investigates the relationship between board composition and corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Specifically, we examine the impact of board composition (aspects like political experience, academic experience, overseas background, and gender diversity) on CSR performance. We test our hypotheses using data collected from 839 Chinese public firms during the period from 2008 to 2016. Applying generalized least squares regression, the study shows that the political experience, academic experience, and overseas background of the board members are positively related to the firm's CSR performance. Moreover, we discuss the distinctive relationship between gender diversity and CSR performance in the context of Chinese culture. We extend the CSR literature by examining unique aspects of board composition in the Chinese context and offer fruitful implications for both scholars and practitioners.

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In this paper, we examine the role of a firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in the advancement of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We argue that a firm's innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk‐taking would lead it to employ more socially responsible practices and generate benefits to society. Moreover, we theorize that this influence would differ, depending on the firm ownership. Specifically, our argument is based on the Chinese context where state‐controlled firms dominate the economy. We test our hypotheses by utilizing secondary data on 738 Chinese public firms over an 8‐year period (2008–2015). Our empirical results demonstrate a positive and significant relationship between EO and CSR performance among state‐controlled firms. However, this relationship is not significant among privately controlled firms.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of social capital on organizational ambidexterity in the context of emerging economies. Moreover, this paper aims to study the moderating influence of absorptive capacity on the relationship between social capital and organizational ambidexterity.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted two studies using survey data collected from 97 Ecuadorian and 100 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).FindingsThe authors found that social capital, the extent to which organizational members interact, collaborate and share knowledge with one another and with external actors, has a positive effect on the simultaneous implementation of exploratory and exploitative innovations (i.e. organizational ambidexterity). Moreover, the authors found that absorptive capacity positively strengthens the impact of social capital on organizational ambidexterity.Originality/valueDrawing on the knowledge-based view and the innovation literature, the authors theoretically argue the importance of social capital and absorptive capacity for SMEs to develop and manage exploratory and exploitative innovations simultaneously in emerging economies of different cultures. The authors empirically test proposed hypotheses in Ecuador and China, two emerging markets with important cultural differences, and show the relevance of social capital in multiple settings.

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Sustainability has become a significant concern worldwide in recent decades. There seems to be implicit competition among firms for better sustainability performance. Like any other firm activity, sustainability undertakings require resources and their efficient use to achieve the desired performance. Firms may hesitate to undertake sustainability initiatives due to the underlying costs, leading to the question of how efficient they are in their sustainability practices. Relying on data from CSRHub and COMPUSTAT, we employed data envelopment analysis to evaluate the sustainability efficiency of 1141 large U.S. manufacturing firms from 2009 to 2018. We measured the sustainability efficiency of each firm relative to those on the efficient frontier for all the firms in our sample and also separately for each industry. The analysis results indicate that firms’ sustainability efficiency varies across years and industries. Furthermore, we show a quadratic relationship between sustainability performance and sustainability efficiency. This finding implies a process that begins with firms struggling to streamline their sustainability efforts and decreasing their efficiency as sustainability performance increases. Sustainability efficiency starts increasing only after a certain threshold is reached in sustainability performance. Our findings offer valuable insights for firms and stakeholders in their efforts to achieve desired levels of sustainability efficiency.

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