Greening Governance in the Gulf: From CSR Strategy to Resource Efficiency

Strategic CSR commitment does not, by itself, establish how sustainability reaches resource‐use practices. We distinguish strategic commitment, environmental management capability, and operational execution as analytical roles that can develop iteratively. Using LSEG and World Bank data, we analyze an unbalanced panel of 281 publicly listed GCC firms with 1398 firm‐year observations from 2010 to 2024. The main models use 1100 observations. Two‐step System‐GMM estimates show positive CSR associations with reported resource‐use performance and environmental pillar scores. The CSR coefficient remains positive when the environmental pillar enters the resource‐use model, a pattern consistent with partial mediation. Green buildings and audit committee expertise have negative interactions at different model stages, with uneven evidence across institutional groups. These estimates concern reported ESG scores rather than physical reductions in resource consumption. Because resource use contributes to the environmental pillar, the mediation pattern cannot independently establish a capability mechanism. The contribution is a bounded account of how strategy, reported environmental performance, infrastructure, and oversight relate within listed GCC firms.