Sustained green innovation in firms is a crucial driver of sustainable economic development. Chief executive officer (CEO) openness, as a key personality trait related to leadership effectiveness, has an important but largely overlooked impact on sustained green innovation. This study aims to explore the impact of CEO openness on sustained green innovation and its boundary conditions. Using data from Chinese A-share-listed firms between 2011 and 2023, we find that CEO openness has a significant positive impact on sustained green innovation in firms. The moderating effects reveal that both digitalization level and CEO shareholding strengthen the positive effect of CEO openness on sustained green innovation. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this positive effect is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, firms in non-heavily polluting industries, and those with high analyst coverage. These findings provide theoretical support for understanding the determinants of sustained green innovation through the lens of CEO personality. They also enrich the growing literature on the impact of CEO openness on corporate decision-making. Furthermore, this study recommends that firms prioritize CEO openness in selection, enhance digital infrastructure, and improve equity incentive measures to ultimately foster sustained green innovation.

Based on behavioral finance theory, we discuss the influence of managers’ herd behavior on corporate financialization from the perspective of managers’ behavioral preferences. Empirical testing was conducted using data from nonfinancial listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2007 to 2021 and a U-shaped relationship was found between managerial herd behavior and corporate financialization. When managerial herd behavior is within an appropriate range, the increase in managerial herd behavior has a negative influence on corporate financialization. In contrast, excessive managerial herd behavior leads to excessive corporate financialization. Additionally, corporate governance has a weakening effect on this relationship. Heterogeneity analyses indicate significant disparities in the effect of managerial herd behavior on corporate financialization among enterprises with diverse ownership structures. Finally, corporate financialization and innovation investments have an inverted U-shaped relationship, and their relationship is moderated positively by management herd behavior. Our results have strong practical significance for fostering the balanced growth of the financial sector and the real economy.

Against the backdrop of the increasingly salient constraints of resource scarcity and environmental pressures on global economic development, sustainable innovation emerges as an imperative strategic pathway for corporations to secure a competitive edge in the international marketplace. Corporate innovation capability serves as the critical factor for both the advancement of sustainable innovation and the maintenance of the corporate competitive edge. While the extant literature has extensively explored how internal and external governance mechanism forces shape corporate investment decision-making, the critical role of non-CEO executives in the process of corporate innovation investment decision-making remains conspicuously underexplored. This study examines the effect of bottom–up governance mechanisms within executive teams on corporate innovation investment from the perspective of non-CEO executive independence. We used a sample of A-listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2021 for empirical tests. We found a U-shaped relation between non-CEO executive independence and corporate innovation investment, and this finding still held after addressing endogeneity issues and conducting a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis revealed that both non-CEO executives’ decision horizon and firm agency costs positively moderate this U-shaped relationship. This U-shaped effect is pronounced in firms with lower CEO power, lower levels of corporate governance, and non-state-owned firms. Our findings provide an important basis for clarifying the internal governance mechanism of the executive teams while offering new insights for optimizing the allocation of corporate resources and promoting corporate innovation from the perspective of improving corporate governance.