Employees' engagement, family ownership, or gender diversity? Searching for determinants of SMEs' green behaviors in CEE countries

Abstract Results of this study go against previous expectations regarding the positive effects of boards' and owners' gender diversity and family ownership on SMEs' green behaviors, expressed by the implementation of proactive environmental strategies (PES) and energy consumption monitoring (ECM). We show that such generally accepted and recommended concepts may not always work, specifically within Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Based on the foundations of stakeholder theory, we surprisingly reject hypotheses expecting positive effects of boards' gender diversity on SMEs' green behaviors. Compared to the research to date, we newly examine the effect of the frequency of manager–employee meetings on SMEs' green behaviors. We show that SMEs' implementation of PES and ECM requires a different frequency of employee engagements. In addition, we confirm that the presence of environmental managers is fruitful for the implementation of PES in family firms. We also reveal that family firms' ECM is significantly triggered by energy taxes, but also by the owners' gender diversity. By linking the managerial perspective including employees' engagement and PES with the technical discipline of ECM, this study provides several theoretical and practical implications.