Exploring Sustainable Workplace Environment and Business Innovation on the Corporate Governance Perspective

Dear Colleagues,

According to seminal work by Shleifer and Vishny (1997), corporate governance is a set of mechanisms that align the objectives and interests of owners and providers of finance, as well as company managers. However, over the years, this concept has been enriched by sustainability issues, presenting new challenges to the theory and practice of corporate governance. Companies—initially big multinational companies, but later including many SMEs around the globe—are becoming more sustainability oriented and socially responsible. Codes of conduct have been adopted to promote sustainable governance due to increasing interest and pressure from costumers, local communities, governments and the competition. Consequently, establishing a model of sustainable governance is not an easy task due to various internal factors and normative biases (Martin, Benn and Dunphy, 2006). Moreover, the paradigm of corporate sustainability and sustainable governance refers to the dimension of continuous and permanent innovation as a competitive tool and business model, responding to new changes in consumers’ and society’s expectations. Innovation implementation and diffusion depend, as many authors have recently argued, on aspects related to corporate governance, e.g., ownership structure, board of directors composition, shareholders’ identity, etc. (see)  (Tribo et al, 2007;   Block, 2012; Balsmeier et al, 2014;  Tsao et al, 2015). Innovation plays a signifiant mediating role in the nexus of corporate governance–corporate sustainability–organizational performance. Last but not least, people are the main actor in this nexus and play the most important role in the equation of the triple bottom line. Creating a  sustainable workplace, defined by Quagraine, T.L.(2015)  as a positive workplace that contributes to improving the employees’ well-being and  involvement in ethical and social decision-making, requires managerial mechanisms and implementaton of policies and practices that effectively achieve harmonization of all the complex and sometimes contradictory interests of employees, companies and society as a whole. 

This Special Issue welcomes theoretical and empirical articles that shed light on this complex nexus of workplace–sustainability–innovation–corporate governance and provides new insights and perspectives on the topic. Researchers interested in the influence of the education process on the social and environmental responsibility of students, as well as the ones investigating sustainable workplace and/or work-life balance, the implementation of sustainable innovation, green innovation, the drivers of innovation, and the development of sustainable corporate entrepreneurship among employees, and any other authors of original or review articles regarding the abovementioned topics, are welcome.

References:

1. Balsmeier, , Buchwald, A.and Stiebale, J. (2014), “Outside directors on the board and innovative firm performance”, Research Policy, Vol. 43 No. 10, pp. 1800-1815.
2. Block, H.(2012), “R&D investments in family and founder firms: an agency perspective”, Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 248-265.
3. Shleifer, and Vishny, R.W. (1997), “A survey of corporate governance”, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 52 No. 2, pp. 737-783.
4. Tribo, A., Berrone, P.and Surroca, J. (2007), “Do the type and number of blockholders influence R&D investments? New evidence from Spain”, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 828-842.
5. Tsao, M., Lin, C.H.and Chen, V.Y. (2015), “Family ownership as a moderator between R&D investments and CEO compensation”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 68 No. 3, pp. 599-606.
6. Martin, A., Benn, S. and Dunphy, D. (2006), “Towards a model of governance for sustainability : networks, shared values and new knowledge”, in: Benn, S., & Dunphy, D. (Eds.). (2006). Corporate Governance and Sustainability: Challenges for Theory and Practice (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203390122
7. Quagraine, T.L.(2015) Employee Involvement as an Effective Management Tool in Decision-Making: A Case Study of Merchant Bank. 2015. Available online: http://ir.knust.edu.gh/bitstream/1

Prof. Dr. Daniel Badulescu
Prof. Dr. Justyna Maria Bugaj
Guest Editors

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• corporate governance
• ownership structure
• ownership concentration
• board of directors
• corporate performance
• corporate sustainability
• social and environmnental responsibility
• sustainable workplace
• work–life balance
• sustainable innovation
• green innovation
• drivers of innovation
• sustainable corporate entrepreneurship