Sustainability and multinationals

Female executives and sustainability (Kiefner, Mohr, Schumacher). In this project, we examine the effect of female representation in multinationals’ top management teams (TMTs) on firms’ support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite the central importance of multinationals in achieving the SDGs, there has been little research on what drives their adoption by multinationals. We draw on social role theory and the literature on team decision-making to argue that female representation in TMTs increases multinationals’ support of the SDGs. First results have been published in the Journal of World Business.
Sustainability and Global Value Chains (Mohr, Konara, Kiefner). We examine how multinationals’ embeddedness in global supply chains affects their suppliers’ SDG. We argue that embeddedness has an inverted U-curve shaped relationship with the suppliers’ commitment to the SDG. Addressing the issue of governance, we suggest that both private and state governance initiatives to enhance CSR along supply chains will shape the nature of the direct effect of supply chain embeddedness on suppliers’ commitment to SDGs. We capture state governance through regulation on CSR in firms’ home-country and private governance through firms’ overall commitment to sustainability (ESG score, firms’ SDG score, or something from the earnings calls).
Alliances with not-for-profit actors (Mohr, Konara, Seitanidi, Garcia-Canal, Mendenz-Fernandez). In this project we study alliances between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and not-for-profit actors (NFAs). MNEs’ access to the specific resources and expertise of NFAs, such as non-governmental organizations, has become more critical over the past two decades. Because MNEs cannot obtain these resources through alliances with other firms, multinationals increasingly form alliances with NFAs to access these resources. In various projects, we explore the nature