Sonia Boukattaya

This study explores the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR)‐related compensation or CSR contracting where executive compensation is tied to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets on waste management strategies. It also investigates the role of eco‐innovation in shaping CSR contracting‐waste management relationships. Using an international panel of 10,886 firm‐year observations across 43 countries from 2011 to 2022, we show that CSR contracting is associated with decreased waste generation and increased waste recycling. By tying executive compensation to sustainability metrics, firms create stronger incentives for managers to prioritize resource efficiency and circular economy practices. This effect is accentuated in environmentally innovative firms indicating that CSR contracting is particularly effective when embedded within a broader organizational commitment to innovation strategies. Further analyses show that the effect is also stronger for hazardous waste, in firms with CSR committees and following the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015. This study provides insights into CSR contracting effectiveness and highlights its potential to complement regulatory policies. The results have implications for corporate boards, policymakers, and stakeholders aiming to embed sustainability into strategic and managerial systems.

This study examines the relationship between gender diversity and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of companies using a sample of 810 French firms from 2011 to 2019. We focus on specific dimensions of CSR. Specifically, we examine the presence of women on different board committees, which, unlike the board of directors, are not subject to regulations regarding the minimum representation of women. Overall, our results show that the presence of women on board committees positively impacts CSR performance, except for the environmental innovation subdimension. This finding implies that women on board committees could bring new insights to specific areas of CSR engagement. The negative impact on environmental innovation can be explained by the risk avoidance behavior of women in financial decision‐making. As green innovations are very risky investments requiring significant financial resources and take longer to deliver a return on investment, women board members are more unwilling to invest in them than their male counterparts. Our results provide evidence that women's representation on audit, nomination, and compensation committees more prominently impact CSR performance than their representation in CSR committees.

This paper aims to examine whether the corporate social practices (CSP) affect the board gender diversity–financial performance relationship. Taking a sample of French firms listed in the SBF 120 index during 2005–2019 period, we used the mediation effect steps analysis to test the mediation effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) versus corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) on the relationship between board gender diversity and the firm's performance. First, our findings show that board gender diversity has a stronger impact on CSI than CSR. Second, we confirm that CSP exert an asymmetric effect on financial performance in favour of CSI. Finally, we show that CSI plays a mediating role between board gender diversity and financial performance.

This research aims to analyze the role played by firm visibility in moderating the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Firm Financial Performance (FFP). Based on the legitimacy theory, a firm’s responses to stakeholder’s expectations would be affected by its public visibility; we hypothesize a positive link between CSR and firm visibility. Moreover, visibility is expected to moderate the CSR-FFP relationship. We applied a Moderated Regression Analysis using the aggregate ESG scores as a CSR proxy on a panel data of listed French Companies (SBF120) over the period 2008–2017. Our findings are in line with legitimacy theory, suggesting that social initiatives would be mean to strengthen the legitimacy and to secure “license to operate”. Furthermore, firm visibility would be a contingency variable that moderates positively CSR-FFP relationship.

The present work aimed to examine the association between Corporate Social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) taking into account corporate social irresponsibility. Here, we used a sample of French non-financial firms listed on SBF 120 between 2011 and 2016. Our findings provided evidence that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) exert opposite effects on the CFP. Using an estimation of the vector autoregressive (VAR) model for panel data, we showed that the CSI has a greater and more lasting impact on CFP than CSR.

While prior studies have investigated the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitment, researchers have scantly studied the potentially important relationship between board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility and irresponsibilityseparately. Drawing on the social role theory and feminist ethics, we hypothesizethat board gender diversity is positively associated with CSR and negatively associated with corporate social irresponsibility (CSI).Here, we relied on a sample of French non-financial companies listed on the SBF 120 index between 2011 and 2016. Our results provide evidence on the positive impact of board gender diversity on CSR and the negative one on CSI. We show that women have a stronger impact on reducing CSI than on enhancing CSR. Our findings were robust to the different estimation methods.

The objective of this paper is to examine the relevance of the increase of women's representivity on the boards and its effect on the improvement of the firm performance. In fact, since 2011, a new law required that 40% of French firms' directors be women. To identify this effect, we use a sample of French firms listed on SBF120 for the period 2011-2016. The main finding is a positive relationship between the percentage of women on boards and Tobin's Q. In addition, the results highlight that the compliance with quota law has no effect on firm performance. As a consequence, we can explain this by the recency of quota law and low adoption by firms in our sample.