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The Influence of Corporate Sustainability Officers on Performance

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Abstract

The creation of a specialized executive position that oversees sustainability activities represents a distinct shift in the structure of top management teams and their approach for addressing sustainability concerns. However, little is known about these management team members, namely the corporate sustainability officers or CSOs. We examine CSO appointments and their association with subsequent sustainability performance. Our results indicate that the creation of a CSO position may represent more of a symbolic versus substantive governance mechanism. Further tests suggest that CSO expertise and the firm’s existing sustainability performance affect the association between the CSO and post-appointment sustainability performance. We find no association between CSO appointments and subsequent sustainability performance for firms that were already poor performers, while firms possessing relatively higher levels of prior sustainability performance appointing a CSO begin to experience significant improvements to performance after 3 years. We further find that CSOs with prior sustainability expertise are associated with increases in sustainability performance in firms that were already strong performers, but not in firms with poor sustainability performance. Non-expert CSOs, on the other hand, are associated with initial decreases in performance for poor performing firms, whereas better performing firms hiring non-expert CSOs are able to rely on other sustainability attributes of the firm and benefit from improvements in performance in the long term. We discuss the potential importance of these positions as it relates to symbolic versus substantive governance mechanisms through the lens of top management team literature streams.

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Notes

  1. Sustainability is an all-encompassing concept which includes both environmental and social initiatives and outcomes. For the purpose of our paper and our attempts to evaluate the role of the CSO and expertise, our focus on sustainability encompasses both environmental and social performance outcomes. Sustainability has become synonymous with other labels such as ESG and CSR. Prior research often examines sustainability as both environmental and social issues, or solely as environmental issues. We attempt to discuss both environmental and social aspect as sustainability issues, as they both fall under the sustainability umbrella. When prior research examines a specific aspect of sustainability, such as environmental performance, we refer to those results specifically as presented in the original work (e.g., environmental performance instead of sustainability performance).

  2. Examples of companies hiring CSOs include Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Tyson, SAP, AT&T, Georgia Pacific, Sun Microsystems, and Disney, among others.

  3. Two of the most pressing issues with regard to the gap between investors and firm-specific sustainability teams are the differing terminology to describe, and different indicators to measure, firm-specific sustainability performance (O’Neill 2016; PWC 2014, 2016), and the inadequate levels of expertise between investors and sustainability teams (O’Neill 2016).

  4. For the years included in our study, Kinder, Lydenburg, and Domini (KLD) Research & Analytics owned this data source. Recently, Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) purchased and continues with the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Statistical Tool for Analyzing Trends (STATS) database.

  5. We also include already established committees on the board that are not specifically developed to address environmental issues, but have included this responsibility in their guidelines. Such committees include: the audit committee, corporate governance committee, and the nominating committee. An example of such an instance is Ball Corp’s proxy statement (Ball Corp 2008), which states: “The Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee is responsible for assisting the Board in fulfilling its responsibility to identify qualified individuals to become Board members; recommending to the Board the selection of Board nominees for the next annual meeting of shareholders; addressing the independence and effectiveness of the Board by advising and making recommendations on matters involving the organization and operation of the Board, Corporate Governance Guidelines and directorship practices; overseeing the evaluation of the Board and its Committees; and reviewing and assessing the Corporation's Sustainability activities and performance…”(italics added).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sam M. Walton College of Business, Department of Accounting, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 72701-1201, USA

    Gary F. Peters

  2. Rawls College of Business, Department of Accounting, Texas Tech University, Box 42101, Lubbock, TX, 79409-2101, USA

    Andrea M. Romi

  3. College of Business, Department of Accounting, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX, 78249-0631, USA

    Juan Manuel Sanchez

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Correspondence to Andrea M. Romi.

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Appendix A: Examples of CSO Expertise

Appendix A: Examples of CSO Expertise

Gene Kahn, former CSO and VP Global Sustainability Officer, General Mills (Bloomberg 2016): “Mr. Gene Kahn was the Founder at Small Planet Foods, Inc. He is a Member of the Advisory Board at Uplift Equity Partners, LLC. He currently serves on the Boards of the Governor’s State of Washington Sustainability Panel, the Rachel Carson Council, and the Center for Organic Education and Promotion. Mr. Kahn has been an organic foods pioneer and an environmental leader for more than 30 years. In 1972, he founded Cascadian Farm. Prior to this, Mr. Kahn served on the Boards of the Washington State Nature Conservancy, Washington State University College of Agriculture Advisory Board, and the US Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board.”

Patricia Calkins, VPEHS, Xerox (2010): “Patricia A. Calkins is the vice president of Environment, Health and Safety for Xerox Corporation. She is responsible for developing and implementing sustainability policies and strategies throughout Xerox that help save hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the company worldwide. She is dedicated to strengthening Xerox’s position as a pioneer in sustainability and is committed to smart environmental management that demonstrates that doing what’s right for the environment is not a cost of doing business, but an opportunity to benefit the world in which we work and live.

Calkins joined Xerox in 1993 as a manager of resource conservation, developing plans to help the company capture energy and materials savings through more sustainable and efficient processes, facilities and product design. Since then, she has assumed increasingly responsible management positions in quality, business process management and product design, enabling the company to remain at the forefront of driving environmental improvement throughout the value chain.

Before joining Xerox, Calkins began her career as a chemist for AT&T and then moved on to initiate many of the company’s sustainability initiatives. During her tenure, she focused on how changes in product and process design could eliminate many environmental challenges, including eradicating the use of toxic chemicals in the electronics manufacturing process. For her efforts, she was recognized for her engineering excellence. In 1992, she joined Abt Associates as a senior scientist where she worked directly with US Environmental Protection Agency in developing market-based voluntary sustainability programs. She also provided consulting services to corporations developing environmental leadership strategies.

Calkins earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, and a Master of Science degree in civil/environmental engineering from Tufts University. In 2001, she received her executive M.B.A. from the University of Rochester. Calkins currently serves as a member of the external advisory board for the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems and is on several boards, including the Central and Western New York Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and the and the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology.”

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Peters, G.F., Romi, A.M. & Sanchez, J.M. The Influence of Corporate Sustainability Officers on Performance. J Bus Ethics 159, 1065–1087 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3818-1

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