EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Green or Greed? An Alternative Look at CEO Compensation and Corporate Environmental Commitment

Claude Francoeur (claude.francoeur@hec.ca), Andrea Melis, Silvia Gaia (sgaia@essex.ac.uk) and Simone Aresu (simonearesu@unica.it)
Additional contact information
Claude Francoeur: HEC Montréal
Silvia Gaia: University of Essex
Simone Aresu: University of Cagliari

Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, vol. 140, issue 3, No 5, 439-453

Abstract: Abstract This study relies on environmental stewardship, a stakeholder-enlarged view of stewardship theory, and institutional theory to analyze the relationship between CEO compensation and firms’ environmental commitment in a worldwide sample of 520 large listed firms. Our findings show that environment friendly firms pay their CEOs less total compensation and rely less on incentive-based compensation than environment careless firms. This negative relationship is stronger in institutional contexts where national environmental regulations are weaker. Our findings have important theoretical meaning and practical implications. Results show that CEOs do not necessarily act opportunistically; rather some of them may be willing to act as stewards of the natural environment and accept a lower, less incentive-based compensation from environment friendly firms. This study also provides evidence of the important influence of the institutional context in setting-up CEO compensation as the relationship is stronger when national environmental regulations are weaker. Our findings question the universal validity of agency theory in explaining CEO compensation. Compensation based on pecuniary incentives might be less indicated to motivate CEOs who feel rewarded by playing a stewardship role for environment friendly firms. When designing compensation for CEOs, compensation committees and external compensation advisors should consider psychological and institutional factors that might affect CEO motivation.

Keywords: CEO compensation; Corporate social performance; Corporate social responsibility; Environmental commitment; Environmental regulations; Stewardship theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-015-2674-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:140:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-015-2674-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-2674-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:140:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-015-2674-5