Abstract
This paper introduces an endosymbiotic framework for studying the role board's generational
composition on firm's ESG performance. The board and the generations comprising the board
are conceptualised as two distinct organisms with the firm (the third \parent" organism), all
with mutual dependencies. Accordingly, we frame the ESG performance (dependent variable)
as the outcome of the symbiotic relationships among the generational diversity of the board
(independent variable), the characteristics of the board (control variable; e.g., board size,
education level, female representation and cultural diversity) and the characteristics of the firm
(control variable; e.g., industry, ROA, sales growth, total assets, intangible assets, and leverage).
The framework has been empirically tested with three propositions following the three outcomes
of endosymbiosis; parasitism (significant negative ESG) commensalism (insignificant ESG) and
mutualism (significant positive ESG). In total we used complete financial, ESG and board data
for an unbalanced panel of 24,202 firm-year observations containing 4,364 firms publicly traded
in the Anglo Saxon cultural cluster; namely the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand,
Canada, and Australia between the fiscal years 2005 and 2019. Using panel data regressions and
various robustness checks, (e.g., sensitivity analysis, placebo tests and endogeneity controlling)
we found that generational composition has a parasitic effect on ESG performance composite
score, the Environmental (E) performance score, the Social performance score (S) as well
as the ESG controversies score. Only the Governance score was insignificant signifying a
commensalism effect. Further interaction tests revealed that this parasitic effect stems from
the members of Generation X. However, when the generational diversity of the board interacts
further with female participation, thus increasing the diversity, the effect shifts to mutualism
signifying the need for further inclusion of females in board decision making.