Social development, economic prosperity, and environmental protection are the ultimate goals of sustainable development pursued by human society. Business firms must undertake these responsibilities. Among the triple bottom lines of social, economic, and environmental sustainability, three issues (i.e., gender diversity, innovation, and environmental issues) have received great academic and practical attention, respectively. Gender gap is a globally prevalent issue, which is especially salient in corporate top hierarchies. A direct manifestation is that there is low proportion of women members in top management teams and resulting low level of gender diversity.

According to existing research, gender diversity refers to the numerical composition of female and male members in a team or organization, mostly due to the increase in the number of female members. Moreover, gender diversity in top management teams is an important influencing factor of corporate innovation and corporate environmental strategy. However, previous studies hold the opposite views regarding whether gender diversity can truly promote corporate innovation. Regarding the relationship between gender diversity and corporate environmental strategy, most of studies consider various forms of environmental activities as homogeneous, overlooking the inherent differences among different types of environmental strategies.

Centering around an overall research question of “the effects of top management team gender diversity on corporate innovation and corporate environmental strategy”, this dissertation conducts two parallel studies to address the above-mentioned research gaps. First, to reconcile the inconsistency in the relationship between gender diversity and corporate innovation, study one focuses on gender differences in interpersonal proclivities and considers both the volume and collaborativeness aspects of corporate innovation. Furthermore, integrating social role theory and attention-based view, study one examines the differential effects of top management team gender diversity on the volume and collaborativeness aspects of corporate innovation, as well as the moderating roles of gender gap in labor force participation rate and female executives’ political participation.

Second, considering the inherent differences among different types of environmental strategies, study two distinguishes between proactive and reactive environmental strategies based on existing literature and attempts to answer when and how top management team gender diversity affects a firm’s choice between different environmental strategies. Specifically, based on the approach/inhibition theory of power, study two examines whether gender power inequality within top management teams affects gender-diverse firms’ choice between proactive and reactive environmental strategies, and the mediating role of top management team’s approach/avoidance focus in this choice process. This dissertation uses panel data from Chinese publicly listed firms to test hypotheses related to main arguments.

This dissertation contributes to the existing studies in three ways. First, from the perspective of gender differences in interpersonal proclivities proposed by social role theory, this dissertation finds opposing effects of top management team gender diversity on the volume and the collaborativeness aspects of corporate innovation, which reveals that gender diversity has differentiated effects on the “quantity” and “quality” of innovation and thus helps to reconcile extant conflicting theoretical viewpoints about the relationship between gender diversity and corporate innovation. By proposing and confirming that top management team gender diversity positively influences the collaborativeness (the “quality” of innovation based on internal stakeholder perspective) of corporate innovation while negatively influences the volume (the “quantity” of innovation) of corporate innovation, this dissertation helps to reconcile existing theoretical debate on whether gender diversity enhance or hinder corporate innovation, revealing a more nuanced gender diversity-innovation relationship than that found in previous studies.

Second, this dissertation provides a novel theoretical perspective to understand the boundary condition of when gender diversity leads to firms’ different choices between proactive and reactive environmental strategies. Literature on the relationship between gender diversity and corporate environmental strategies has treated various forms of corporate environmental activities as a homogeneous whole, arguing that gender diversity can facilitate all kinds of environmental strategies simultaneously. However, broader environmental management literature has shown that proactive and reactive environmental strategies differ in nature. Confounding these two strategies may lead to spurious results. Consequently, previous literature fails to explain when gender diversity can lead firms to adopt one over another environmental strategy. Given this, this dissertation distinguishes between proactive and reactive environmental strategies in terms of their relations with institutions, ends and means, value, and organizational capabilities needed. Drawing on the approach/inhibition theory of power, the findings show that when gender power inequality within top management team is high, gender-diverse firms are more likely to adopt reactive rather than proactive environmental strategies; when gender power inequality within top management team is low, gender-diverse firms are more likely to adopt proactive rather than reactive environmental strategies. These findings enrich the literature on corporate environmental management by unveiling a boundary condition for the relationship between gender diversity and corporate choices of environmental strategies.

Third, by finding the mediating effect of top management team approach/avoidance focus in the relationship between gender diversity and corporate choice of environmental strategies, this dissertation demonstrates the micro-psychological mechanism behind the relationship between gender diversity and corporate environmental strategies, and enriches existing rationale about gender ethical differences. Research on leadership team-related antecedents of corporate environmental strategy is relevant to this dissertation. This body of inquiry argues that the differences in ethical tendencies among women and men are the main reason for how gender diversity influences corporate environmental strategy. Departing from this line of research and drawing on social psychology literature, this dissertation proposes and confirms the mediating role of top management team motivation (i.e., approach/avoidance focus) in the relationship between gender diversity and corporate environmental strategies. This finding offers rigorous empirical evidence for that micro-level psychological motivation is a mechanism channeling gender diversity to corporate environmental strategies, which is different from the gender difference rationale used in existing research and enriches research on the antecedents of corporate environmental strategy.