Does board connectedness influence corporate sustainability performance?

Abstract

Corporate sustainability has attracted the attention of academics around the world over the last four decades. It is one of the most significant corporate trends (Harjoto and Jo, 2011). The role of the businesses has become threefold, catering to people, planet and prosperity – the triple bottom line. By doing so, companies can appropriate tangible benefits, e.g. (i) engaging employees who in turn can become more productive and aligned with the company’s objectives (Cao and Rees, 2020); (ii) increasing customer loyalty and, therefore enhancing share-of-wallet and improving revenue (McDannold and Kwon, 2023); and (iii) tapping capital at a lower cost (Puggioni and Stefanou, 2019). For example, investors may be willing to divert their capital away from companies that are not actively contributing to the economic, social and environmental welfare of society (Shakil 2021; Tjahjadi et al., 2021).