Cultural diversity

Engineering

Philosophy

Ecology

Biology

Sustainability

Diversity (politics)

Public relations

Embedded system

Nexus (standard)

Accounting

Economics

Business

Corporate governance

Empirical research

Corporate sustainability

Endogeneity

Management

Geography

Political science

Immigration

Epistemology

Econometrics

Corporate social responsibility

Nationality

Gender diversity

Finance

Journal of Cleaner Production

Drawing on the agency theory perspective and following the recent calls to contemplate multiple dimensions of diversity simultaneously, this study intends to empirically investigate the effects of board diversity as a multifaceted phenomenon, specifically nationality and gender diversity on the extent of corporate sustainability performance in a developing country, namely, Palestine over the period 2013 to 2018. Empirical evidence on the connection between board diversity and corporate sustainability performance from countries influenced by cultural and traditional terms is remarkably limited. This study handled this research gap and went beyond the narrow and pre-conceived perspectives. Thereby, contributes theoretically and practically to the corporate sustainability literature by providing in-depth insights about board diversity and corporate sustainability-related activities as paradigmatic evidence from a developing country with an exceptional cultural environment of business. The ambiguous findings are often deemed a consequence of endogeneity problem. Therefore, to provide a thorough and profound analysis, two-step system GMM are performed. Additionally, our findings are robust since four proxies for nationality and gender diversity are employed. The results unveiled that corporate sustainability-related actions are positively and insignificantly affected by nationality and gender diversity. This weak nexus between the two mechanisms is widely attributed to so-called geographically proximate cultures and gender discrimination in the workplace. These empirical results provide a useful and multidimensional insights for regulatory parties, companies, and different groups of stakeholders to promote the link between board diversity and corporate sustainability beyond the current boundaries.

Boardroom nationality and gender diversity: Implications for corporate sustainability performance