Is It Necessary to Centralize Power in the CEO to Ensure Environmental Innovation? Aibar Guzmán, Beatriz Frías Aceituno, José Valeriano Eco-innovation Environmental innovation CEO power CEO ability Financial performance Upper echelon theory Using data from a sample of 4863 international firms corresponding to the period 2002–2017, this paper examines the role that chief executive officer (CEO) power plays in environmental innovation and the impact that these strategies have on financial performance. Both issues have been the subject of considerable debate in the literature, with opposite views and contradictory findings. The results indicate that investing in environmental innovations related to the use of clean technologies, ecological production processes, and the design, manufacture and commercialization of environmentally sustainable products requires that CEOs have a greater degree of power in order to support projects that do not entail a higher return in the short and medium terms. Additionally, the results show that the negative economic effect of eco-innovation reverses in the fourth and fifth years after environmental innovations were implemented. Thus, this study supports the view regarding a “bright side” of CEO power with regard to corporate sustainability. 2021-04-15T10:34:28Z 2021-04-15T10:34:28Z 2021 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Aibar-Guzmán, Beatriz, and José-Valeriano Frías-Aceituno. 2021. Is It Necessary to Centralize Power in the CEO to Ensure Environmental Innovation? Administrative Sciences 11: 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/ admsci11010027 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/67959 10.3390/admsci11010027 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI