Author(s)

Grigoris Giannarakis¹, Nikolaos Sariannidis², George Konteos¹

¹Department of Business Administration, University of Western Macedonia, Grevena, Greece.
²Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the main Corporate Governance (CG) characteristics on the corporate environmental performance. In addition, it focuses on global food companies as this sector is distinguished by specific characteristics. The sample of the study employs 174 food companies from the Thomson Reuters Global Food & Beverages Price Return Index for 2017. The Environmental Score as calculated by Thomson Reuters is adopted in the proposed model as a proxy of corporate Environmental Performance (EP). A regression analysis is developed in order to investigate the Board Size, the Board Independence and the Board gender composition of Board of Directors (BoD) on EP. The results revealed that the size of the BoD and the presence of women directors on Board have a positive effect on environmental performance. The study assists corporate managers to implement the appropriate Board characteristics in order to enhance their EP and socially responsible investors to identify companies with higher level of EP. This study extends the scope of previous studies by investigating the food and beverage sector and understanding of CG characteristics on EP taking into account innovating index as a proxy of EP.

Corporate Governance, Board of Directors, Environmental Performance

Giannarakis, G. , Sariannidis, N. and Konteos, G. (2020) The Effect of Corporate Governance Characteristics on Environmental Performance: The Case of Food and Beverage Sector. Open Journal of Business and Management, 8, 1988-2005. doi: 10.4236/ojbm.2020.85122.