Research and publications

The agency of greenwashing

The Journal of Management and Governance (September 2024) 

Author(s):

Gianfranco Gianfrate, Marco Ghitti, Lorenza Palma

Summary:

The Journal of Management and Governance (Volume 28, Issue 3, September 2024), Special Issue: Leveraging Intersections in Management

 

As climate change increasingly challenges business models, the disclosure of firm environmental performance casts growing attention by corporate stakeholders. This creates wider opportunities and incentives for greenwash behaviors.

The authors propose a novel set of measures to capture greenwashing and they investigate the association between greenwashing and corporate governance features that traditionally mitigate agency problems.

They show that board characteristics are variously associated with the apparent degree of corporate greenwashing. Firms with more independent directors tend to greenwash more, the presence of female board directors seems to have a positive impact on the degree of greenwashing, while the effect of board size on greenwashing remains ambiguous.

Importantly, they find that greenwashing reduces firm value.

 

 

Keywords:

Greenwashing, ESG, Corporate governance, Board, Valuation, Climate change, Firm value

Type : Academic Publication
Date : 04/07/2023
Editor : Springer