Lawrence Loh

Implementing environmental protection taxes implies a shift in environmental policy from government enforcement to market incentives, fostering long-term sustainability. Based on institutional theory, this study explores the nonlinear impact of environmental taxes on corporate green innovation and its influencing mechanism, by considering the complex interaction between innovation offsets and environmental costs. Utilizing data from Chinese A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during 2012 and 2023, the study reveals an inverse U-shaped relationship between environmental taxes and green innovation performance, within which corporate environmental responsibility functions as a mediator. Furthermore, the results also reveal that the relationship between environmental taxes and green innovation is positively moderated by the development level of regional green finance. In addition, the heterogeneity analyses show that the inverse U-shaped relationship is more pronounced among heavily polluting and large-scale firms, and firms in more marketized areas and areas with higher levels of intellectual property protection. The research enriches the literature on the dual-edged effects of environmental taxes anchored in green innovation and unpacks the internal mechanism of the effectiveness of environmental protection tax policy. It also provides practical implications for the design of tiered taxes and green finance policies aimed at achieving sustainable development.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration is an increasingly popular and innovative investing strategy that requires companies to be transparent about their ESG practices to facilitate investors’ decisions. In the palm oil sector, companies are addressing ESG risks by adopting and disclosing ESG efforts to improve access to financing. This study seeks to broaden existing research on ESG transparency and firms’ financial indicators by using firm valuation as a financial indicator and investigating the moderating role of firm size in the palm oil sector. It first investigates whether ESG transparency has a direct positive or negative effect on firm valuation. Transparency is measured using the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT) 2021 assessment, which provides scores for palm oil companies’ total, environmental, social, and governance disclosures. Firm valuation is measured by the price-to-earnings ratio (P/E), a widely used ratio calculated by dividing the share price by earnings per share. The study also explores the moderating role of firm size, using accounting-based measures such as revenue and assets, in strengthening the relationship between ESG transparency and firm valuation. The results show statistically significant negative relationships between ESG transparency and firm valuation. Companies with stronger ESG transparency are valued at a discount relative to companies with weaker ESG transparency. Additionally, the results find that firm size plays a moderating role such that larger firms strengthen the negative relationships between all transparency measures and firm valuation. These findings encourage constructive action for various stakeholders and provide implications for future research to support mainstreaming sustainable palm oil.

Like the chief executive officer (CEO), the chief financial officer (CFO) is an important corporate player. However, compared to the role of CEOs, research on the factors influencing corporate innovation has paid very little attention to the role of CFOs. Based on the perspective of role theory, we measure CFO role performance by organizational identification to explore the role of CFOs in corporate innovation. Employing the availability of CFO organizational identification data from a survey of listed firms in China, we find that: (1) CFO organizational identification is negatively associated with innovation output in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and positively associated with innovation output in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs); (2) corporate misconduct experience positively moderates the relationship between CFO organizational identification and innovation in SOEs; (3) CFO financial industry experience positively moderates the relationship between CFO organizational identification and innovation in non-SOEs. Our results show that CFOs play the supervisor role in innovation in SOEs and the supporter role in innovation in non-SOEs. Our research provides theoretical and practical references for companies to sustainably drive innovation.

The intersection of sustainability and corporate governance is particularly evident in leadership diversity, which has gained increasing prominence in recent years. The central question of leadership diversity’s impact on firm performance remains open, including for Asia, which has been relatively less-studied. This paper seeks to contribute to this literature, adopting a multi-dimensional view of leadership diversity in Singapore’s public-listed companies. We examine diversity in boards and senior management combined, in order to better understand the impact of diversity among firm strategic leadership. Based on random effects regression analysis using data from 577 companies, our results generally provide support for a beneficial diversity impact. Gender, age, and education leadership diversity were found to have a positive influence on financial performance. We further found gender diversity and performance to have an inverted U-shaped relationship, with the inflexion point being gender parity. This suggests a potentially important role for gender parity in firm leadership governance.

From the perspective of agency theory, family members’ involvement is negatively correlated with technological innovation. However, from the perspective of stewardship theory, it is believed that family members’ involvement is positively correlated with technological innovation. From the phenomenon mentioned above, this paper studies the influence of family members’ involvement on R&D investment and R&D output and tests the above competitive hypotheses. Based on the 2007–2016 data of A-share listed family-owned enterprises, this empirical study found that family members involved in corporate management not only save R&D investment, but they also increase R&D output. After controlling for endogeneity, the above conclusions are still valid. This study provides empirical evidence for the objective recognition of the relationship between family members’ involvement and technological innovation.

The recent sustainability reporting (SR) mandate by the Singapore Exchange has heightened stakeholder awareness and propelled sustainability disclosures. Albeit encouraging, more than half of listed companies in Singapore do not produce sustainability reports. This signifies a lack of sustainability commitment, or perhaps, local companies have limited understanding on the potential value of sustainability. Our study aims to fill this gap by examining if (1) the 100 leading brands in Singapore similarly benefit from a higher brand value when they produce sustainability reports; (2) if more disclosure leads to higher brand value; (3) if a lagged effect is present. The methodology of this study included the collation of sustainability information from the 100 leading brands in Singapore, scoring each company’s sustainability performance using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. Finally, we examine the correlations using regression analysis to compare the companies’ sustainability performance with the reputed brand rankings by Brand Finance. Our findings revealed that one-fifth of the 100 leading brands in Singapore do not engage in sustainability, despite the positive correlation between sustainability reporting and brand value. Our results also suggest that greater disclosure leads to higher brand value, yet social and environmental indicators are undermanaged. Moreover, there is a lagged effect as public perceptions take time to shape. Internalising a company’s sustainability vision through a multi-stakeholder consultative approach is critical. Brand managers and sustainability practitioners must be aware that failures to meet stakeholder expectations today may consequently impact investors’ decisions.

Corporate sustainability has been a long-established topic in the corporate operating process. Much research focuses on the internal relationships among environmental, social and economic dimensions of corporate sustainability, yet few studies have examined the topic from the perspective of environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives and innovative performance. Using insights from stakeholder theory, this study develops theoretical linkages between corporate ESG initiatives and innovative performance. It further considers whether these relationships still exist under different institutional development settings. Based on the samples of 433 observations which are listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, in China, from 2007 to 2017, empirical results using the method of hierarchical regression analysis have confirmed that corporate environmental initiatives, social initiatives and governance initiatives have direct positive impacts on innovative performance. Furthermore, in examining the interactive effect of individual dimensions of ESG initiatives, the results reveal that corporate governance initiatives play a moderating role in the relationship between environmental initiatives and innovative performance and in the relationship between social initiatives and innovative performance. Finally, the empirical analyses also show that institutional development influences the effectiveness of corporate governance initiatives. This research contributes to extending the prior literature and providing several recommendations for firms to achieve corporate sustainability.

As China is undergoing economic transformation and facing increasing energy and environmental problems, it is essential to pay special attention to sustainable innovation governance. This research took industrial waste and total energy consumption into consideration and uses a super efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model to empirically evaluate the regional innovation efficiency of Chinese provinces. The results showed that the efficiency of China’s regional sustainable innovation has not changed significantly over recent years. In addition, the results also showed large and varying degrees of innovation efficiency across different provinces. Eastern China, in comparison to central and western China, showed higher innovation efficiency. In addition, we found a slightly increasing trend in terms of innovation efficiency disparities between the three areas. On the basis of these findings, the reasons for the innovation efficiency gap between different regions were analyzed. The impacts of influential factors on sustainable innovation efficiency were further explored. We found that technology market maturity affected sustainable innovation efficiency positively, while government funding had a negative impact on sustainable innovation efficiency. Industrial structure and environmental regulations had no significant effect on sustainable innovation efficiency. Finally, some implications for improving governance performance in terms of sustainable innovation were provided.

The Chinese government is committed to sustainability governance to alleviate the shortage of energy and the imbalance between ecological environment and economic development. This paper evaluates and analyzes the sustainability governance performance of China. A bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed to evaluate sustainability governance performance of 30 provinces based on ecological efficiency in China from 1998 to 2015. The results indicate that the ecological efficiency of China significantly improved as a whole, which is related to the decline in sulfur dioxide emissions. Among these provinces, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia exhibited the highest values, while Gansu, Chongqing, and Sichuan had the lowest values. The 30 provinces were divided into four sub-areas. The average ecological efficiency of the eastern area was the highest, followed by the northeast area. Compared to the east area, northeast area, and central area, we find that west area obviously falls behind. As such, the results provide helpful guidance to improve ecological governance performance.