CEOs' religious beliefs and the environmental innovation of private enterprises: The moderating role of political ties

Abstract

Environmental innovation is an important way for enterprises to take social responsibility. Based on upper echelons theory, this study constructed a model of the relationship of religious beliefs, political ties, and environmental innovation. The CEOs of 196Chinese private enterprises were selected as the research sample, and the multiple regression analysis method was used to test the influence of the CEOs' religious beliefs on the environmental innovation of the enterprises, as well as the moderating role of the CEOs' political ties. The results showed that CEOs' Eastern religious beliefs had a positive effect on the incremental eco-innovation of the private enterprises and a negative effect on radical eco-innovation. However, the CEOs' Western religious beliefs had a negative effect on the incremental eco-innovation of the private enterprises and a positive effect on radical eco-innovation. In addition, the results showed that political ties played a positive moderating role between the CEOs' Eastern religion beliefs and the incremental eco-innovation and between CEOs' Western religion beliefs and the radical eco-innovation of the private enterprises.

Exploring the relationships between corporate social responsibility, leadership, and sustainable entrepreneurship theories: A conceptual framework

“…The GOEL president orientation toward sustainability is not a merely cosmetic approach; instead, it is an ethical orientation, proper to sustainable entrepreneurs. This has to be ascribed to his strong religious values that allow him to believe that structural contextual problems could be faced through the cooperation tool (Liao, Dong, Weng, & Shen, ; Su, ). The personal history of the GOEL president, who founded GOEL together with the bishop of Locri and Gerace Diocese (Mons.…”

“…Moreover, educators should enable students to develop a deep "passion" for sustainability in order to educate not just future business leaders but future global citizens (Adams, Heijltjes, Jack, Marjoribanks, & Powell, 2011). The strong, true religious values of the GOEL president affect the GOEL normative CSR strategy (Su, 2019;Liao et al, 2019) and his transformational leadership empowers his employees (Felício et al, 2013).…”

CEO ability and sustainability disclosures: The mediating effect of corporate social responsibility performance

“…Considering the key role that the CEO plays in corporate decisions, researchers have analysed the extent to which several CEOs' demographic and personality attributes (e.g., gender, age, educational background, experience, personality, political ideology, religious beliefs, experience, leadership style, power, and media exposure) affect their companies' decisions regarding CSR investment and reporting. Thus, some studies document that CEOs' attributes significantly influence their firms' CSR strategies (Chin, Hambrick, & Trevino, ; Di Giuli & Kostovetsky, ; Godos‐Díez, Cabeza‐García, Fernández‐Gago, & Nieto‐Antolín, ; Liao, Dong, Weng, & Shen, ; Maak et al, ; Oh, Chang, & Cheng, ; Petrenko et al, ; Tang, Qian, Chen, & Shen, ; Wu, Kwan, Yim, Chiu, & He, ), and the associated disclosure policies (Lewis et al, ; Li et al, ).…”

Is It Necessary to Centralize Power in the CEO to Ensure Environmental Innovation?

“…As a result of increasing stakeholder demands for corporate environmentally responsible behavior, in recent decades eco-innovation has become increasingly important for companies worldwide (Amore and Bennedsen 2016;Huang et al 2021) as an essential way to achieve environmental sustainability and fulfill their social responsibility (Guoyou et al 2013;Liao et al 2019;García-Sánchez et al 2020a). In parallel, eco-innovation has attracted growing research attention (de Jesus Pacheco et al 2018) with the aim of knowing its characteristics and drivers (Díaz-García et al 2015).…”

“…In parallel, eco-innovation has attracted growing research attention (de Jesus Pacheco et al 2018) with the aim of knowing its characteristics and drivers (Díaz-García et al 2015). However, most studies have focused on examining the institutional and market factors as well as the firm characteristics that lead companies to pursue eco-innovation (Keshminder and Río 2019), whereas researchers have paid relatively little attention to the role played by the chief executive officer (CEO) in this regard (Liao et al 2019), despite being the main actor responsible for corporate strategies, including those related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Arena et al 2018;García-Sánchez and Martínez-Ferrero 2019;García-Sánchez et al 2020c). Indeed, only a small number of papers have analyzed how the CEO's characteristics may affect her/his company's propensity to develop eco-innovation.…”