Military executives and corporate environmental information disclosure: Evidence from China

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume

278

Publisher

Elsevier

School

School of Business and Law

RAS ID

31991

Funders

National Natural Science Foundation of China Major Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research Funds for Jiangsu University Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China

Grant Number

2242020K30071

Comments

Chen, H., An, M., Wang, Q., Ruan, W., & Xiang, E. (2021). Military executives and corporate environmental information disclosure: Evidence from China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 278, article 123404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123404

Abstract

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd This article provides empirical evidence on whether and how executives’ military experience affects firms’ environmental information disclosure (EID). Using the panel data analysis method based on a sample of 2614 listed Chinese companies from 2007 to 2016, we find that companies with military executives have lower EID than those without military executives. We further divide the executives into chairpersons and CEOs and find that military chairpersons have a significant negative effect on corporate EID, whereas military CEOs have no significant effect on the quality of EID. The results remain robust in a series of robustness tests. Our seemingly against common sense findings suggest that although firms run by executives with the military experience may have a strong environmental performance, the quality of EID of those firms is not necessarily high possibly due to the lack of skills or willingness of military executives in communicating their environmental performance with external stakeholders. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

DOI

10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123404

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