Does the board tenure impair the effectiveness of environmental monitoring? A cross-country evidence

This study aims to determine the influence of larger board tenure on environmental monitoring and also examine the moderating role of board gender diversity and board independence between board tenure and environmental monitoring nexus. The datasets comprised 12,482 firm-year observations from 23 countries from 2011 to 2022. The results revealed that a more experienced/long-tenured board is negatively associated with environmental monitoring. Moreover, the findings indicated that gender diversity and independent directors mitigate the negative relationship between longer-tenured boards and environmental monitoring. These findings highlight the importance of corporate governance practice to overcome the negative influence of larger tenure board on firm’s environmental monitoring. This study provides new and valuable insight into corporate governance's influential role on board faultlines. The study's findings support the agency theory, and cross-country insights add to the growing corporate governance and environmental literature. Finally, for policymakers and business executives, this study highlighted that effective corporate and environmental governance produces synergistic effects in achieving sustainable development goals.