BRIEFING The positive societal impact of board directors branching out, why ski season is at the centre of a climate-innovation conundrum and a project to reduce data centre energy emissions all feature in this round-up of news and research from BGA schools. Tim Banerjee Dhoul , Ellen Buchan and Colette Doyle report THE LATEST NEWS FROM ACROSS BGA’S NETWORK Business
HOW BOARD DYNAMICS CAN AFFECT ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL PERFORMANCE
corporate networks. It found that firms occupying central positions within these networks tend to demonstrate enhanced environmental performance. “The configuration of the board of directors or their networks is crucial for organisations seeking to generate value beyond the purely financial,” explained Erica Salvaj, study co-author and a management professor at Universidad de San Andrés. “Being integrated into director networks facilitates early access to emerging practices, increases visibility and generates imitation pressures that encourage the adoption of sustainability standards.” However, organisations also tended to align themselves with socially accepted non-financial standards and Salvaj noted that “conformist imitation,
responding only to external pressures, can limit innovation in sustainability.” Moreover, the study found that greater board activity and board size are negatively associated with environmental performance. The suggestion is that frequent board meetings indicate pressing issues that push environmental sustainability off the list of priorities, while larger boards simply struggle to reach agreements on potentially contentious topics. Having said that, increased board activity did correlate with improved social performance in the study’s results. Co-authored with colleagues at Universidad Del Desarrollo in Chile, the study was published in European Research on Management and Business Economics . TBD
SCHOOL Escuela de Negocios, Universidad de San Andrés (Udesa), Argentina
nteractions and learning among board directors have a significant influence on
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companies’ environmental and social performance, according to a new study. The analysis of 522 US companies listed on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indices for the years 2016, 2018 and 2020 assessed environmental and social performance using the Bloomberg ESG database. It also considered board characteristics, with a focus on directors who simultaneously serve on multiple boards, thereby connecting different
6 Business Impact • ISSUE 2 • 2026
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