Takeoff or Crash Landing? Investigating the Corporate Governance- Corporate Environmental Responsibility Interface for European Airlines

Abstract

The aerospace industry has long been characterised by poor ecological performance. Conversely, this also means that the firms doing business here thus have much to gain from becoming greener. Accordingly, the study at hand is an inquiry into listed European airlines and the corporate governance (CG) drivers leading them to improve their corporate ecological responsibility (CER). Our investigation distinguishes itself from the otherwise bountiful CG-CER literary field by investigating the aforementioned industry via a mixed methods approach. First, we examine whether and to what extent CG mechanisms, primarily board characteristics, impel ecological strategies and doings. Second, we reinforce our quantitative aspects by conducting a limited number of semi-structured interviews with CG expects. Quantitative inquiries can, if done correctly, illuminate relationships between variables but cannot say much about why that is. Additionally, our qualitative modelling ultimately comes up short due to data dearth. As such, this element of our inquiry does not further the collective understanding of the field. We, therefore, turned to interviews in hopes of producing interesting conclusions even if our numerical dimensions lead nowhere and for us to bring about more detailed and in-depth knowledge of the CG-CER interface than a conventional numerical inquiry could produce. Interestingly, our interviewees spoke candidly about contemporary factors not fully mirrored in the extant literature leading us to believe these will play essential roles in academic inquiries going forward. Although our inquiry is deficient in producing significant empirical findings, we do highlight what we believe are equally important and thrilling opportunities for future research. Our literature framework demonstrates a disproportionate amount of purely quantitative research being conducted in this space. If the field is to further its collective understanding of the CG- CER puzzle, undoubtedly essential for solving wicked problems on a global scale, academics must begin to make their CG-CER portrayals contextually dependent. We, therefore, wrap up our inquiry by outlining several ways the scholarship could go about producing research that does precisely this.