In the era of global ecological crises, both management scholars and business practitioners are increasingly interested in issues related to biodiversity loss and enhancement. Indeed, biodiversity loss has been acknowledged as one of the main sustainability challenges of our time, requiring actions from multiple stakeholders to ensure the wellbeing of people and planet both now and in the future. Consequently, businesses have been challenged to re-think their value creation, that is, to reconsider what kind of value, with whom and for whom they create and how this value creation is related to biodiversity loss and degrading ecosystems. While much of extant management research has mostly focused on biodiversity accounting and reporting, management theory still lacks means to comprehend the relationship between business and biodiversity more profoundly. To address this, the purpose of this paper is to examine business-stakeholder relationships and their dynamics in the nature-invasive mining sector to understand how mining companies and their stakeholders can jointly create value for biodiversity. We build on stakeholder theory and value creation and analyse 24 interviews of three mining companies and their stakeholders carried out in 2023. The preliminary findings show that biodiversity is increasingly recognised as a relevant issue within the business-stakeholder relationships and various elements of joint value creation for biodiversity can be identified. First, value for biodiversity is created through fulfilling the requirements set by authorities. Second, value for biodiversity is created through local stakeholder interactions. Third, companies create value for biodiversity together with their stakeholders through intentional and voluntary, biodiversity-related research and development initiatives. Fourth, emergent and regenerative value for biodiversity is created in local, bottom-up processes and surprising stakeholder encounters. Regarding stakeholder relationship and value creation dynamics, we identified that these levels of value creation activities are interlinked in that they occur simultaneously, and enrich and inform each other, having potential to create more versatile value for biodiversity at all levels. This paper builds a bridge between stakeholder theory and biodiversity by directing attention to the crucial role of business-stakeholder relationships in addressing biodiversity as simultaneously a local and global phenomenon.

This paper examines the relationship between sustainability professionals' personal connection to nature and its impact on their roles within organizations. While previous research has largely focused on technical expertise and professional backgrounds, little attention has been given to how personal relationships with the natural environment influence their effectiveness in promoting sustainability initiatives. To address this gap, the study uses a qualitative approach, applying the Gioia methodology. Sixteen sustainability professionals from large European organizations participated in in-depth interviews and completed a questionnaire measuring their connection to nature. The findings, still under analysis, are expected to provide new insights into how these personal connection to nature shape professional conduct in sustainability roles, contributing to environmental leadership literature and bridging management and psychology fields.

Sustainability and the circular economy have become the dominant lenses through which to understand firms’ efforts to address ecological and social challenges. However, critics point to incremental improvements that fail to address the core challenges facing business, the economy, and the planet. In this regard, the emerging concept of regeneration involves new ways for companies to contribute to restoring and revitalizing ecological and social systems. We conduct a multiple case study with companies developing regenerative strategies that involve taking steps beyond sustainability and circularity as usual. We find that firms approach regeneration through three emerging logics: institutional logics representing how actors in the field approach a normatively appropriate way of operating when it comes to firms’ role in socio-ecological ecosystems, organizational logics representing how firms think about their relationship with those ecosystems, and strategic logics representing how firms create and capture value in alignment with regenerative thinking. Based on these findings, we develop an integrative model of multi-level logics change for regenerative business. The model depicts a systems view of sustainability-related disruption that takes place through the three emerging logics and the tensions involved when existing logics are confronted. The sets of emerging logics (institutional, organizational, and strategic) support one another by providing evidence of the viability and actionability of regenerative business, helping to alleviate the inherent tensions in disruptive logics change. Overall, our study provides implications for the nascent literature on regenerative business and for disruptive innovation and business sustainability research and practice.

In this conceptual paper, we focus on biodiversity loss, which is a phenomenon of concern for all individuals and organizations. Biodiversity can be considered as part of the global commons, in other words as something that exceeds a nation’s jurisdiction, while it also has local and place-specific nature. The maintenance, governance and conservation of the commons require the participation and inclusion of a broad number of stakeholders. We are particularly interested in the potential of business organizations for addressing biodiversity. Although the role of businesses in both causing biodiversity loss and their potential for fighting it has become obvious in recent years, the role of businesses in tackling biodiversity loss is an under-researched topic in business and management scholarship.

Although the importance of stakeholder collaboration in biodiversity management is well established, many studies adopt a relatively loose idea of stakeholder theory, use the stakeholder concept in a commonsense meaning, or remain on a relatively descriptive and undertheorized level. Consequently, many studies lack a more thorough exploration of stakeholder theory and its central principles in addressing biodiversity. To fill this gap, we build on stakeholder theory, particularly Freeman’s (1984) stakeholder framework consisting of rational, process and transactional levels and provide an integrative framework of stakeholder theory in addressing biodiversity as a wicked problem.

We argue that addressing biodiversity with stakeholder theory necessitates a closer examination regarding three levels of stakeholder management: (1) the rational level of stakeholder mapping, (2) the process level of operational environment, and (3) the interaction level of stakeholder relationships. Addressing the literature of biodiversity conservation with this framework allows for understanding of who the important stakeholders in biodiversity conservation are, what kind of processes it necessitates, and how stakeholders can and should be engaged in addressing biodiversity as a wicked problem. We use the framework to map the current literature on biodiversity management and suggest avenues for future research.

The complimentary effects of monitoring, ethical corporate identity and sustainability incentives on greenwashing

More and more companies worldwide embark on the environmental sustainability (ES) wagon to address increasing stakeholder demands and leverage environmental, reputational, and financial benefits. These efforts range from making strong environmental claims and commitments and peripheral ES activities, such as taking some eco-efficiency measures, to more business-related activities, such as reducing energy use in operations, investing in lower carbon infrastructure, producing green products, etc. Firms not only respond in various ways to the variety of stakeholder demands but also communicate these actions as well as their environmental performance. However, given the increase in irresponsible corporate behavior, various stakeholders have growing concerns about whether these actions are a short-term fix, sideline programs, empty rhetoric, or greenwashing. For example, the PWC 2021 Consumer Intelligence Series survey[1] indicates that consumers and employees expect more from businesses than they actually deliver, making it clear that "corporate actions matter more to them than words". Sorkin (Times, 2020) questions the green intention or push of Larry Fink by providing evidence that "going green won't be easy or quick" such as Black Rock's stakes in fossil fuel companies or that 2/3 of its assets are currently being invested in passive ETFs.

In trying to improve their ES, firms employ different corporate governance mechanisms (Aguilera, Aragón-Correa, Marano, & Tashman, 2021; Jo & Harjoto, 2012; Oh, Chang, & Kim, 2018; Zaman, Jain, Samara, & Jamali, 2022). For example, firms might try to increase their ES by aligning their managerial incentives with ES (Arora & Dharwadkar, 2011; Kock, Santaló, & Diestre, 2012), or by increasing their monitoring on their ES (Arora & Dharwadkar, 2011; Graves & Waddock, 1994; Sethi, 2005). Furthermore, firms might try to improve their ES by improving their ethical corporate identity, which could be broadly seen as an informal type of monitoring mechanism (Berrone, Surroca, & Tribó, 2007). However, in this paper, we do not focus on the direct impact of these governance mechanisms on ES. Following the research approach that examines the combined impact of corporate governance mechanisms of the firm’s performance (Aguilera, Desender, & Kabbach de Castro, 2012; Oh et al., 2018; Rediker & Seth, 1995), we maintain that it is a misalignment between these corporate governance mechanisms that could, inadvertently, lead not to increased ES, but to greenwashing.

Greenwashing is defined as the gap between companies' ES pledges and actions (Berrone, Fosfuri, & Gelabert, 2017; Ioannou, Kassinis, & Papagiannakis, 2022), that is when companies decouple their ES policy adoption from its actual implementation. Greenwashing firms often overcommunicate their ES performance while, at the same time, their ES performance is below social expectations (Delmas & Burbano, 2011). Greenwashing can have many facets. Companies can make vague or false environmental claims, exaggerate green commitments or benefits, give no proof of environmental-related actions, or make selective disclosures by highlighting positive impacts and hiding the negative ones. In fact, a recent survey by the European Commission and the national consumer authorities screening 344 websites found that 53% of environmental product claims made by companies were "vague, misleading or unfounded". In addition, this survey points out that, despite all actions to address it, greenwashing is becoming a vast and increasing concern in business today, as consumers are deeply concerned about climate change impacts and are turning to a greener way of life. Notably, recently, the UK watchdog banned Shell, Petronas, and Repsol advertisements on posters, TV, and YouTube as greenwashing efforts, as these oil and gas companies are actually highlighting their green commitments and plans while at the same time creating environmental harm through their core business activities, i.e., the fossil fuel investment and extraction (Hodgson, 2023).

Drawing mostly on agency-theory, which maintains that firms should monitor and incentivise their managers so that they do not engage in opportunistic behaviors (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jensen & Meckling, 1976), we develop two hypotheses on the combined impact of monitoring, broadly understood, and incentive alignment. First, we argue that high level of sustainability incentives unaccompanied by high levels of monitoring will have a positive effect on the level of greenwashing of the firm. We expect this to be the case because it will be in the interest of the managers to exaggerate their ES, as this will increase their bonuses and the chance they are caught is low, given low levels of monitoring. Second, we argue that high levels of sustainability incentives in firms without high levels of ethical corporate identities will also lead to higher levels of greenwashing. The rationale is similar, except for the monitoring mechanism, which in this case is the ethics of the managers themselves, expected to be higher in firms with higher levels of ethical corporate identities. In short, we maintain that the gap between incentives and monitoring (including ethics as a form of monitoring) can explain greenwashing much more than either monitoring or incentive mechanisms can on their own.

In testing our hypotheses, we use data from two databases. Data on the corporate governance mechanisms and firms’ environmental performance were obtained from the ASSET4 database provided by Thomson Reuters, which includes reliable and systematic data of organizations' performance on environmental, social, and governance metrics for more than 7,000 companies worldwide, organized across ten themes (emissions, environmental product innovation, resource use, human rights, human rights, community, product responsibility, shareholders, board, compensation, and CSR vision and strategy). We also drew financial information from the Worldscope database. The study period was from 2008-2022. To reduce the noise distraction from industry and country variation we restricted our sample to manufacturing firms located in the USA (Hartmann & Uhlenbruck, 2015). We concentrated on US manufacturing firms as those firms tend to have a greater impact on the natural environment than service firms (Hartmann & Uhlenbruck, 2015). After combining data from the two databases, the final longitudinal dataset contained 6,283 firm-year observations. To test our hypotheses, we employed a panel data research design.

Our preliminary findings support both of our hypotheses. After controlling for several variables, our models indicate that levels of monitoring and the ethical corporate identity of the firm interact with sustainability incentives in influencing greenwashing, in the way expected from our hypotheses. In particular, we find that low monitoring and sustainability incentives positively correlate with greenwashing, whereas high monitoring and sustainability incentives negatively correlate with greenwashing. In summary, higher monitoring might reduce greenwashing when compensation is high, while lower monitoring might lead to an increase in greenwashing as compensation rises. We find similar results for the firm’s ethical corporate identity.

In conclusion, our work in this paper makes the following contributions. First, we contribute to agency theory, by expanding its influence beyond the domain of financial performance to the broader corporate social responsibility domain (Arora & Dharwadkar, 2011; Graves & Waddock, 1994). Second, we contribute to those within the agency theory tradition, who maintain that we should study the impact of governance mechanisms as bundles and not independently (Oh et al., 2018; Rediker & Seth, 1995). Our work here contributes to both of these lines of inquiry by showing how a “gap” between incentives and monitoring mechanisms can lead to undesired outcomes. Finally, our findings here have implications for management practice, suggesting that an unbalanced increase in incentives – not accompanied by an increase in formal monitoring, or ethics – can have a negative impact on firm behavior.

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[1] The PWC survey is available at: https://www. pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/ library/consumer- intelligence- series/consumer-and-employee-esg-expectations.html (last accessed May 9th, 2023).