Natalia Ortiz-de-Mandojana
University of Granada, School of Economics and Business
The influence of director interlocks on the environmental performance of the firm: A resource based view of the board social capital
I am a PhD student and research assistant at the Management Department of the University of Granada (Spain). My research interests are primarily related to connections between corporate governance issues and environmental management. Also, I am member of the Spanish research group "Innovation, Sustainability and Development" (ISDE).
The influence of director interlocks on the environmental performance of the firm: A resource based view of the board social capital
The role of the boards on the environmental progresses of the firm has received a minor attention in the literature comparing with the analysis of the influence of managers or employees. We use a resource based view of the board to focus on the influence of the directors who simultaneously belong to the boards of directors of several companies -director interlocks-. Our paper proposes that the director interlocks may be valuable for the improvement of the corporate environmental performance by increasing the social capital of the boards. Although previous debate regarding the implications for the firms of director interlocks, we show the positive influence of director interlocks on corporate environmental performance when firms belong to big group and for low and high levels of interlocks diversity. Our analysis includes a sample of 93 electric utilities in the United States and data regarding their governance, environmental, and financial situation coming from different databases. Our results improve the understanding about the role of the corporate governance characteristics on the corporate environmental performance and clear general doubts regarding the influence of boards as a valuable assets of the firms and the debated influence of the director interlocks.