What Do We Know About How Companies Manage Waste? The Effect of Tenure and Diversity of Directors on Disclosures

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the effect of board tenure on firms' waste management disclosure and explore whether this effect is amplified by board gender and cultural diversity. The analysis is based on data from 832 large firms worldwide from 2011 to 2020. We draw on a multi-theoretical framework combining the Upper Echelons Theory (UET), Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), and the Resource-Based View (RBV) as our main theoretical underpinnings and complementing them with entrenchment theory, gender socialization theory (GST), and imprinting theory. The results indicate that board tenure positively affects waste management disclosure and that board diversity strengthens the direct impact of tenure on the waste information firms disclose to stakeholders. These results are robust to variations in methodological specifications. Additionally, the amplifying role of the health crisis triggered by the COVID pandemic is identified.