Resumo

The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) was created in 1999 and is dedicated to voluntarily aligning corporate strategies and operations with ten principles [3] which encourage the private sector to actively uphold them in partnership with the UN and relevant stakeholders [2]. Literature addresses this subject through different lenses and levels of analyses, once adopting the UNGC is a topic of interest for many stakeholders concerned with environmental degradation and social injustice.

Despite the UNGC being a hot topic scholars point out the need for further rigorous studies aimed at empirically analyzing this phenomenon. This paper aims to identify from a multilevel perspective the drivers of the UNGC adoption. On a micro level we believe that RBV theory allows us to discuss how the firm's internal environment influences the adoption. At the macro level we focused on the VoC approach. Hence, the meso level mediates the interaction between the other two levels, in which we adopted the stakeholder theory to predict how some board characteristics influence the UNGC adoption.

The research is anchored in three theories that base our hypotheses. By the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach we suppose that coordinated markets are more in line with sustainable issues [1]. Through the lens of the stakeholder theory we explore how organizational behavior can be predicted by the varied stakeholder relationships and their influence on firm characteristics [4]. We also used the Resource-Based View (RBV) theory, which can complement the stakeholder theory, to demonstrate the existence of intangible resources, such as the firm size, to support companies in adopting the UNGC.

The study was exploratory with a quantitative approach. Data from 1773 companies headquartered in countries with coordinated and liberal economies, between 2019-2021, were analyzed. While the dependent variable was UNGC, the independent variables were the company size (micro level), the board characteristics (meso level), and the capitalism type in the country (macro level). Analysis was conducted by multivariate analysis, in which we performed different tests like panel data regression with fixed effects, logistic regression, and additional tests, such as VIF, Breusch-Pagan test and the GMM.

The result analysis proceeds in several steps. First, descriptive statistics for all variables used in the models were provided. Second, a Pearson correlation matrix was constructed between the dependent and independent variables. Consequently, econometric models were built to test the hypotheses, in addition to the execution of statistics tests. The empirical results presented evidence that company size, the board of directors’ size and the type of capitalism that the country follows positively affect the UNGC adoption. In summary, four of five hypotheses was confirmed.

The study presented evidence that companies that adopt the UNGC have more financial resources available, also indicating a greater number of stakeholders. In addition, larger boards tend to influence the adoption of the UNGC, showing that a greater diversity of board members' backgrounds can bring results in terms of social and environmental issues. Finally, companies should be aware that in coordinated economies their investments in non-financial issues should increase, because in these societies there is greater pressure from stakeholders for more responsible action by firms.

[1] Gallego-Álvarez, I., & Pucheta-Martínez, M. C. (2020). Environmental strategy in the global banking industry within the varieties of capitalism approach. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29(2), 347–360. [2] Orzes, G. et al. (2020). The impact of the United Nations global compact on firm performance, 227. [3] UNGC. (2023). The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact. https://unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles [4] Wicaksono, A. P., & Setiawan, D. (2022). Water disclosure in the agriculture industry: Does stakeholder influence matter? Journal of Cleaner Production, 337.