From campus to boardroom: how alumni networks impact corporate greenwashing

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Purpose This study examines the impact of executive alumni network centrality on corporate greenwashing behaviour among Chinese A-share listed companies. Grounded in social network theory and institutional complementarity theory, it investigates the mechanisms, namely information transmission, social supervision and reputation maintenance, through which informal alumni networks shape corporate environmental governance. The research further explores the interactive effects between alumni networks and formal institutional governance, including intellectual property protection, legal systematisation and marketisation. Additionally, it analyses heterogeneous effects across ownership structure, market position, institutional investor ownership and pollution intensity. Design/methodology/approach Employing a panel dataset comprising 1,012 Chinese A-share listed firms with 10,238 firm-year observations spanning 2009–2022, this study utilises social network analysis conducted via Pajek software to construct four centrality measures, degree, closeness, betweenness and eigenvector, synthesised through principal component analysis. Corporate greenwashing is operationalised using both the Bloomberg-Wind discrepancy method and the TF-IDF text similarity approach. Ordinary least squares regression models incorporating industry and year fixed effects are estimated with firm-clustered robust standard errors. Endogeneity is addressed through instrumental variable estimation, Heckman two-stage selection correction and propensity score matching. Findings The empirical results demonstrate that greater executive alumni network centrality significantly attenuates corporate greenwashing behaviour. Formal institutional governance, encompassing intellectual property protection, legal systematisation and marketisation, exhibits a complementary rather than substitutive relationship with alumni networks, jointly reinforcing the suppression of greenwashing. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that this inhibiting effect is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises, firms occupying superior market positions, companies characterised by higher institutional investor ownership and entities operating within heavily polluting industries. These findings remain robust across alternative variable operationalisations, endogeneity corrections and multiple sensitivity analyses. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature in three respects. Firstly, it pioneers the incorporation of executive alumni networks into the corporate environmental governance framework, elucidating how informal institutions mitigate greenwashing through information, supervision and reputational channels, thereby extending beyond the prevailing focus on formal regulatory mechanisms. Secondly, it advances institutional complementarity theory by demonstrating synergistic effects between formal and informal governance within the environmental domain. Thirdly, it offers differentiated empirical evidence across ownership types, market positions, investor structures and pollution intensities, furnishing actionable implications for policymakers formulating targeted environmental regulations in China's transitional economy.

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