The double effects of female executives' participation on corporate sustainable competitive advantage through unethical environmental behavior and proactive environmental strategy
基于中国制造业上市公司数据，研究发现女性高管参与既能抑制企业的不道德环境行为，又能促进主动环境战略，从而双重提升可持续竞争优势，但环境利益相关者压力与环境领导力的调节作用存在边界。
Abstract Based on the upper echelons theory, ecofeminist theory, and natural resource‐based theory (NRBV), this study has constructed a relational model between female executives' participation, unethical environmental behavior, proactive environmental strategy, and corporate sustainable competitive advantage. The samples include a total of 496 female executives from listed 524 companies in the manufacturing sector in China, and multiple regression methods are used for the analysis. The study showed that female executives' participation had double positive effects on corporate sustainable competitive advantage, which included both the inhibiting effect on unethical environmental behavior and the stimulating effect on proactive environmental strategies. The study also explored the boundary conditions of “conservative” and “proactive” behaviors from the internal and external perspectives of enterprises. But it was shown that the effect would not be further improved when both moderation effects of environmental stakeholder pressure and environmental leadership were higher at the same time. As enterprises' behaviors should match with their capability range, radical behaviors might run counter to their desires.