Sustainability and financial performance of transport and logistics firms: Does board gender diversity matter?

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influence of corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate social performance (CSP) on corporate financial performance (CFP) of transport and logistics firms. Moreover, the moderating effects of board gender diversity (BGD) on the relationship between CEP and CFP, and CSP and CFP are also investigated. We use a cross-country sample of 56 transport and logistics firms with 243 firm-year observations between 2013 and 2017. We estimate the hypothesised relationships using fixed effect and random effect models. The findings reveal that CEP has a significant negative effect on CFP but the positive moderating effects of BGD mitigates the adverse effect. We further find a significant negative effect of CSP on CFP, but no moderating effect of BGD therein. The findings indicate that transport and logistics firms should maintain their board gender diversity to achieve a positive outcome of their investments into environmental performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Board gender diversity
• environmental performance
• social performance
• upper echelon theory
• stakeholder theory
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).