Corporate sustainability: The pivotal role of corporate scientists and gender diversity

Abstract

AbstractAt a time when sustainable practices are becoming increasingly important in many economies, we need a thorough understanding of the determinants of corporate sustainability. Research on the influence of human resources in this context focuses mainly on executive roles such as CEO and board member. This emphasis tends to deny the potential contribution made by other employees to fostering corporate sustainability. This is the setting for our study of the part played by corporate scientists. Their rigorous academic training and specialized research expertise endows corporate scientists with distinct attributes which could encourage more sustainable business activities. We show that the role of the corporate scientist goes beyond enhancement of the firm’s inventive capacity and find a causal effect of scientist presence on companies’ prioritization of environmental objectives. We also find that the presence of women scientists has a particularly pronounced effect. Our results have implications for policy and recruitment strategies in terms of their emphasis on sustainability and gender inclusivity.

Keywords

• corporate scientists
• gender diversity
• environmental objectives
• Research & Development (R&D)
• sustainability in corporate strategy
• J16