Boards of directors and environmental sustainability: Finding the synergies that yield results

Abstract

Boards of directors play an important role in one of the biggest challenges facing companies today: environmental sustainability. While research has mainly focused on the individual and isolated impacts of board composition characteristics on environ- mental sustainability, we aim to provide an understanding of what combinations of these characteristics result in its high/low levels and why. Using a fuzzy-set qualita- tive comparative analysis of a Spanish company's sample over the period 2014– 2019, we find that the characteristics of board composition could be complemented or substituted among them, having a similar impact on environmental sustainability performance. We also find that large boards, with a high presence of women and a low presence of family members, led to high environmental sustainability while hav- ing no dedicated sustainability committee and a lack of independence with no family presence yielded a low one. Finally, we draw four strategies for the design of the board composition.