Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?

Abstract

corporate sustainability: a strategy? ioannis ioannou george serafeim working paper 19-065 corporate sustainability: a strategy? ioannis ioannou london business school george serafeim harvard business school working paper 19-065 copyright © 2019, 2021 by ioannis ioannou and george serafeim. working papers are in draft form. this working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. it may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. copies of working papers are available from the author. funding for this research was provided in part by harvard business school. corporate sustainability: a strategy? ioannis ioannou and george serafeim first draft: october 29th, 2018 this draft: april 20th, 2021 abstract: we explore the conditions under which firms maintain their competitive advantage through sustainability-based differentiation when faced with imitation pressures by industry peers. we document growing intraindustry convergence on sustainability actions over time for almost all industries in our sample and show that interindustry heterogeneity in the rates of intraindustry convergence is associated with (a) the importance of environmental and social issues relative to governance issues, and (b) the tone and volume of feedback received from stakeholders. further, we find that actions characterized by low regulatory uncertainty are more likely to be imitated whereas those characterized by high novelty are less likely to be imitated. we then …

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