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How does owner identity affect environmental management system (EMS) adoption by business group affiliates? While current research on EMS adoption is mostly focused on stand-alone Western firms, a marked uptake of adoption has unfolded in Eastern countries such as China, where business group affiliates are the dominant organizational form. This stark contrast between corporate interest and research attention has left a clear lacuna in our understanding of how systems that can reduce environmental impact diffuse across industrial settings. We argue that state, family, and foreign owners of affiliated firms show distinct propensities to adopt an EMS, owing to differences in legitimacy needs, ownership competencies, and group-level preferences to engage in systematic environmental practices. Logistic regressions based on data from listed Chinese business group affiliates between 2008 and 2019 show that state and family ownership negatively influence the likelihood of EMS adoption, whereas foreign control has a positive effect. More intragroup transactions exacerbate the low adoption propensity of family-owned firms. Our study contributes to the literatures on business groups and corporate environmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how place and place-basedness are essential to understanding the conflict dynamics of natural resource use. Based on a single case study and using an ethnographic approach to examine a place, the paper unearths how place is mobilised in corporate–community relations. This study defines place-basedness as having two relational elements: ecological and social embeddedness. It finds four positions with differing place identifications, meanings, and relationships with the ecological and social place. This article concludes that while ecological embeddedness enhances the ability to resist natural resource use through knowledge attribution and actively mobilising a place, the social embeddedness of some positions constrains local people's ability to resist. It also identifies attachment to and detachment from place as two aspects of a central mechanism whereby countering positions are mobilised in the hegemonic struggle. The findings contribute to our understanding of place as a constituting part of corporate–community relations and place-basedness both as a resource for and hindrance to resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholder theory has grown into one of the most frequent approaches to organizational sustainability. Stakeholder research has provided considerable insight on organization–nature relations, and advanced approaches that consider the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature. However, nonhuman nature is typically approached as an ambiguous, unified entity. Taking nonhumans adequately into account requires greater detail for both grounding the status of nonhumans and particularizing nonhuman entities as a set of potential organizational stakeholders with different characteristics, vulnerabilities, and needs. We utilize the philosophical concept of 'recognition' to provide a normative underpinning for stakeholder theorizing on nonhuman nature in both universal and difference-sensitive terms. We discuss how the status model of recognition helps identify relevant nonhumans as organizational stakeholders, establish respect, and particularize nonhumans in their distinctiveness and in partner-like ways. The implications of the recognition approach for stakeholder research are explicated with an illustrative case that exemplifies the recognition and particularization of nonhuman nature. We contribute to stakeholder research on nonhuman nature by suggesting that recognition provides a conceptual tool for theorizing the stakeholder status and particularization of nonhuman nature. Thereby, this article reduces anthropocentric bias and increases the capacity of stakeholder theorizing to confront the challenges of the ecological crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a method that identifies the attention paid by earnings call participants to firms' climate change exposures. The method adapts a machine learning keyword discovery algorithm and captures exposures related to opportunity, physical, and regulatory shocks associated with climate change. The measures are available for more than 10,000 firms from 34 countries between 2002 and 2020. We show that the measures are useful in predicting important real outcomes related to the net‐zero transition, in particular, job creation in disruptive green technologies and green patenting, and that they contain information that is priced in options and equity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost two decades ago, Prahalad and Hammond [Harv Bus Rev, 80(9):48–59, 2002] introduced the base/bottom of the pyramid (BOP) approach to profitably serving the poor with business models adapted from developed markets while alleviating poverty. In response to disappointing results and ethical criticism, the BOP approach evolved from a just-for-profit approach with a passive role of the poor to an inclusive development approach that integrates the principles of the triple bottom line. A recent review of the BOP literature [Dembek et al., J Bus Ethics 165(3):365–382, 2020], however, reveals a lack of empirical evidence to support the sustainable BOP approach. In this paper, we specify the assumptions underlying the sustainable BOP approach and test them using structural equation modeling with clustered robust standard errors on a unique dataset of 212 firms. Our findings show that BOP business model involvement and adaptive capacity are significant drivers of the triple bottom line at the BOP; however, business model adaptive capacity does not guarantee an ecologically sustainable performance at the BOP. We find that there is a need for further extension of the ethical foundations of the sustainable BOP approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: We estimate firm‐level physical risk from climate change based on managerial evaluation and firms' exposure to climate hazard events and find that climate risk results in unfavorable corporate financing terms related to bank loans (higher interest paid, higher likelihood of being required to collateralize the loan, and greater number of covenant constraints). Firms that take measures aimed at managing climate risk, including corporate climate strategy, board‐level governance, specific or integrated process to cope with climate change, climate opportunities, and climate policy involvement, are able to mitigate the negative impact of climate risk on loan contracting. We further find that higher climate risk level is associated with inferior financial performance and higher default probability, which potentially lead to more stringent loan terms. Managerial Summary: We examine how a firm's exposure to climate risk affects its financing terms from bank loans. Climate risk exposure is assessed by firm managers and also reflects the degree to which the firm is subject to climate‐induced natural disasters. The results show that if exposed to higher climate risk, which hurts financial performance and heightens default likelihood, firms face higher interest rates and more stringent collateral and covenant constraints when borrowing from banks. Nevertheless, firm managers could significantly mitigate this adverse climate impact on loan financing by integrating climate change into business strategy, having the board take direct responsibility for climate change issues, establishing a climate change‐focused risk management process, seeking business opportunities from climate change, and engaging in activities that influence climate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global consensus is growing on the contribution that corporations and finance must make towards the net-zero transition in line with the Paris Agreement goals. However, most efforts have ultimately focused on public companies. This article argues that such a focus falls short of providing a comprehensive approach to the problem of climate change. It particularly examines the contribution of private companies to climate change and the phenomenon of brown-spinning. We show that one cannot afford to ignore private companies in the net-zero transition. Yet, private companies lack several disciplining mechanisms available to public companies, such as institutional investor engagement, certain corporate governance arrangements, and transparency through regular disclosure obligations. Nevertheless, along with some equally applicable generic regulatory instruments, private companies might be subject to external push by their financiers, banks. The article closes with policy implications. Primarily, we discuss and evaluate the recent push to extend climate-related disclosure requirements to private companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprises are the market players for carbon reductions and carbon trading, and they are also the significant driving force in a low-carbon economy and society. Using the data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2016, this study uses a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effects of the low-carbon city construction on corporate carbon reduction performance. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the low-carbon city construction promotes corporate carbon reduction performance. Further analysis indicates that the policy effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). Moreover, environmental quality can affect the promotion of local government officials, which is more prominent in pilot low-carbon cities, and political promotion incentives significantly improve corporate carbon reduction performance. Furthermore, the highest emission reduction effects come in the fourth year after adopting a carbon reduction policy and are concentrated among the firms in the eastern region. Overall, our findings offer a new point view for a deeper understanding of the improvement of corporate carbon reduction performance, and provide microscopic evidence for the objective evaluation of the environmental effects of China's low-carbon city pilot policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the tensions that arise when Patagonia simultaneously pursues sustainability and quality objectives embedded within its mission statement: "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." Specifically, this case study focuses on Patagonia's durable water repellent (DWR) problem. DWR is a highly effective chemical treatment used to waterproof jackets (supporting the quality objective) but has by-products that are toxic and persist in the environment (undermining the sustainability objective). This case explores the challenges Patagonia has faced and presents some creative solutions to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the consensus that climate change will have huge consequences not just for the planet but also on corporate operations, businesses continue to fail to adjust their strategic decision-making processes to become more sustainable. One of the silent culprits behind climate change inertia lies in the cognitive biases at play in corporate decision making. This article builds on existing strategic decision-making models to explain how biases prevent managers from accurately identifying the moral dimensions of climate change. It also presents a broad range of practical interventions for how this constraint can be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to assess the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of Malaysian manufacturing small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and the role of dynamic capacities in promoting sustainable business practices. The data was gathered through a survey completed by 216 Malaysian manufacturing SMEs with an SEM‐AMOS nested model comparison analysis. The findings revealed that economic, social, and environmental dimensions are related to sustainable business practices. Besides, firms' dynamic capabilities fully mediate the association between economic, social, and environmental dimensions in Malaysian manufacturing SMEs. This study intended to assist academics, practitioners, policymakers, and other sectors in establishing sustainability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Per definition business sustainability demands the integration of environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Yet, managerial decision-making involving sustainability objectives is fraught with tension and the way managerial decision-makers frame sustainability issues in their mindset influences how sustainability tensions are managed at the organisational level. In the bid to better understand what types of managerial mindsets, or cognitive frames, foster integrative business sustainability practices that simultaneously advance environmental, social, and economic objectives, extant research has focussed on the underlying logics that drive the acknowledgement of sustainability tensions. However, the existing logics-based constructs do not sufficiently explain this link, and it has been suggested that managers perceive and manage sustainability tensions based on the values that they hold. To clarify the roles of managerial values and logics as antecedents in business sustainability decision-making, we integrate Keeney's value-focussed thinking approach with managerial and organisational cognition perspectives. Drawing on data from a survey with 169 senior procurement managers in Australia we found three types of cognitive frames which demonstrate that stronger sustainability values are associated with a more holistic perception of sustainability tensions and vice versa. We also found that managers' cognitive framing of sustainability is strengthened by more holistic organisational cognitive frames and discuss according implications for managerial decision-making in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contribution to limited research on ways to be greener in the events industry, this paper demonstrates the importance of cross-organization coordination in implementing green events. In a case study on China Import and Export Fair, we examined the interplay of stakeholders in the process of greening from the perspective of value chain governance. The results revealed that (1) key stakeholders formed a profit-driven value chain that inhibited the promotion of green booth, (2) the fair used institutional power and bargaining power to engage key stakeholders, and (3) developed a governance model to encourage greening by using multiple instruments of governance (i.e., green booth standards, knowledge transfer, and a green booth competition). In light of those results, this paper expands the scope of literature on green events by offering novel insights into governance along value chains and highlighting their managerial implications for promoting green events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost thirty years after its initial use in the Brundtland Report, the concept of “sustainability” has become ubiquitous within business, with virtually every company division across a broad range of industries developing “sustainable” models and practices. While the original Brundtland idea of sustainable development has the potential to do much good in guiding business practice, this potential is being undermined by the systematic misuse, misunderstanding, and flawed application of the concept in many business settings. Under the guise of sustainability, business is being asked to do both less than and more than what should be required by a commitment to sustainable development. As a result, serious ethical and practical questions go unanswered, questions that must be addressed before sustainability can become a meaningful business strategy. This address situates sustainable business within its original context of sustainable development and argues against attempts to convert sustainability either into a narrow concept of risk management or into a broad concept of social responsibility. It then lays out a sustainability research agenda that helps us understand how to create businesses that can meet present and future needs without jeopardizing future generations via the destruction of the biosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research Summary: We examine how a firm defends its capability and character reputations in response to different violations. We develop our core theoretical mechanism—stakeholders' situational expectations—to theorize that the effectiveness of a firm's response strategy following a violation depends on the nature of the violation and the reputational judgment being made. We test our hypotheses using two longitudinal violation samples and novel media‐based measures of reputation. Generally, we find that a more accommodative strategy is an effective defense following a capability violation, but it is less effective following a character violation. In supplemental analyses, we also discover that a more accommodative strategy is less effective at managing general reputation. Ultimately, our theory and findings suggest that reputation defense is more complex than previously considered. Managerial Summary: We shed light on the challenges managers face in defending their multiple reputations following a violation. We suggest that the type of violation affects stakeholders' expectations of the firm, and that these expectations differentially threaten a firm's multiple reputations as well as the efficacy of its response strategy. Using a sample of capability‐based (unintentional financial restatements) and character‐based (environmental malfeasance) violations, we find that a more accommodative response strategy can defend certain reputations following a capability‐based violation but can be detrimental to other reputations. We also find accommodativeness to be generally harmful following a character‐based violation. Ultimately, our results suggest that managers should consider both the type of reputation they are defending and the nature of the violation when implementing a response strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the person-organization fit theory, this research aims to investigate how socially responsible HRM (SRHRM) positively affects employees' organizational citizenship behaviors toward the environment (OCBE) by increasing person-organization fit. This study also captures the moderating effect of the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility (RESR) in influencing the indirect effect of SRHRM on OCBE via person-organization fit. Data were collected from 302 employees in a state-owned chain hotel in Shanghai, China. The results indicated that SRHRM indirectly influenced employee's engagement in OCBE through person-organization fit. The positive relationship between SRHRM and person-organization fit and the indirect effect of SRHRM on OCBE via person-organization fit were more significant when employees hold high rather than low levels of RESR. Research implications and prospects were also explored in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds on insights from 49 sustainability leaders in the U.S. by examining green innovation from the game perspective. It explores how corporate sustainability can advance environmentally friendly innovations, and what managerial roles and activities are required to enable the transformation. It identifies four green innovation games characterized by different underlying value creation logics and organizational and mental barriers. The article suggests ways that can help managers to overcome these barriers and incorporate three decisive managerial roles into their corporate agenda and culture to advance corporate sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development (SD) will be the driving force to Twenty-first Century as automation was to the Twentieth Century and stream was to Nineteenth Century. There are two levels of sustainability: Macro-Level (country, cities) and Micro-Level (manufacturing enterprises and its town and regional areas). In this paper, Micro-Level of sustainability will be discussed. The major challenge of manufacturing enterprises is modelling and assessing the sustainable development performance. Introducing indexes for sustainable development assessment in manufacturing enterprises is important not only to enable them to quantitatively estimate SD, but also to determine the requirements of components for these enterprises to survive. The main objectives addressed in this paper is how to model the required components and how to introduce a new assessment framework for assessing sustainability from lowest levels, dimensions up to sustainable development level according to Micro-Level. The three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) are modelled, estimated and incorporated into a concept, the so-called ‘general sustainable development index’. Based on these concepts, the sustainable models will be analysed and presented through covering all aspects/issues of sustainability. The ultimate goal of this paper is considering the needs of manufacturing enterprise to be sustainable as well as to be globalised through introducing the concept of economic-social-environmental sustainable development and basic attitudes related to creating sustainable development value in engineering practices (economic), social (political) and environmental community. An industry-based case study is used to represent sustainability through aspects, performance metrics, indicators and pillars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental orientation has emerged as a noteworthy strategy for firms attempting to provide an authentic, unified image of environmental commitment to stakeholders. However, it is yet to be assessed from those employees most responsible for conveying an environmental image. This research examines the construct from the salesperson's point of view. Integrating social identity theory within a traditional Input-Process-Output framework, we demonstrate the importance of aligning firm ideals with individual boundary spanner identity in an environmental context. Our findings suggest that salespersons' perceptions of a firm's environmental orientation directly influence their effort and participation. Further, this relationship is amplified when the salesperson also has strong organizational identity. Finally, when salespeople put more into their work or actively engage in improving their company's environmental image, this increased effort and participation ultimately contributes to individual sales performance and job satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some managers and entrepreneurs decide to act in ways that result in harm to the natural environment, despite the fact that such actions violate their own values. Building on moral self-regulation theory (Bandura, 1991), we propose that entrepreneurs' assessments of the attractiveness of opportunities that harm the natural environment depend on the simultaneous impact of values and personal agency. By cognitively disengaging their pro-environmental values, decision makers (i.e., entrepreneurs) can (under certain circumstances) perceive opportunities that harm the environment as highly attractive and thus suitable for exploitation. The results of a judgment task that generated 1,264 opportunity assessments nested within 83 business founders offered support for this general prediction and indicated that the extent of founders' disengagement of their pro-environmental values was stronger when they had high, rather than low, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and stronger when industry munificence was perceived as low rather than high. We discuss our new measure of moral disengagement in a decision-making context and the implications of the study's findings for extant literatures on moral disengagement and sustainable entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of apprehension about climate change and the future of our planet, private companies are increasingly recognizing their role in increasing sustainability and lowering carbon emissions. To address this growing concern, some industry leaders are taking unilateral action to implement sustainable practices, but other companies have made agreements to fight emissions together. However, the Sherman Antitrust Act forbids agreements in restraint of trade. Further, antitrust law traditionally has refused to recognize ethical or moral justifications as legitimate reasons to permit anticompetitive agreements. As society's concern for the planet grows and elected leaders move slower than needed to address climate problems, private sector actions take on a special urgency--especially given the massive carbon emissions stemming from corporate activities. This Comment reexamines the constructs and restrictions of antitrust law and identifies a solution that will allow companies to enter agreements aimed at addressing climate change while still upholding antitrust law's primary goal: consumer welfare. Specifically, this Comment proposes an exemption to antitrust law for agreements addressing climate change based on new Dutch guidelines and also provides a framework for companies to combat antitrust challenges to sustainability agreements absent an explicit exemption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to show the level of involvement of Polish enterprises from the construction industry in the implementation of CSR programmes, with particular emphasis on environmental protection tasks. The survey, carried out with the use of a questionnaire technique, covered 177 enterprises, including their division into large, medium, and small ones. The survey was carried out using CAVI and PAPI techniques with the use of a proprietary questionnaire form. The results of the research indicate that environmental protection is not a priority CSR area for construction enterprises. The activities undertaken in the field of environmental protection are dominated by those which are directly related to the construction activities conducted. For them, activities going beyond that scope, such as supporting initiatives or promoting pro-ecological behaviour, are much less important. There is a visible difference between large enterprises and entities belonging to the two remaining groups. Large enterprises are more inclined to take universal measures which go beyond their construction site. This indicates their important role as potential creators of good practice, setting behaviour patterns throughout the construction sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global Pact demands private enterprises to actively support communities in social disadvantage. Some enterprises have responded by implementing inclusive business. Value co-creation has been identified as critical for the advancement of these novel business models. However, extant research has mainly studied value co-creation from the perspective of the organizations supporting the project while this work explores the factors that facilitate or inhibit value co-creation from the perspective of the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) segment. Qualitative information collected through in-depth interviews with managers of lead Ecuadorian firms and group interviews with members of communities involved in the inclusive business was analyzed to outline suggestions to overcome barriers and take advantage of current enablers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the recent study "CEO hubris and firm pollution: state and market contingencies in a transitional economy" of Zhang et al. (J Bus Ethics 161(2):459–478, 2020) in this journal. We very much appreciate the valuable initiative of Zhang et al. to study the potential effect of CEO characteristics on corporate pollution. At the same time, we are concerned with the authors' interpretation of the regression results and their operationalization of CEO hubris. We hope to contribute to the literature on managerial hubris in two ways. First, we repair the authors' inferences and conclusions about the actual effect of CEO hubris on firm pollution with respect to their conflicting regression results. Second, we unpack and clarify the authors' vulnerable operationalization of CEO hubris. We hope to stimulate more research on (1) the (tricky) relationship between CEO hubris and firm pollution, and (2) managerial hubris more generally through a more rigorous operationalization and measurement of hubris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the environmental performance of family and nonfamily public corporations between 1998 and 2002, using a sample of 194 U.S. firms required to report their emissions. We found that family-controlled public firms protect their socioemotional wealth by having a better environmental performance than their nonfamily counterparts, particularly at the local level, and that for the nonfamily firms, stock ownership by the chief executive officer (CEO) has a negative environmental impact. We also found that the positive effect of family ownership on environmental performance persists independently of whether the CEO is a family member or serves both as CEO and board chair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines changes in the social responsibilities of business and the practices of business ethics in Germany. Prior to the 1980s, German corporations followed ethics practices that were implicitly assumed in laws and regulations affecting their businesses. Since that time, the easing of the regulatory framework has created a situation where corporations explicitly take responsibility for their actions relating to a wide range of social and political issues. This is said to have created a situation where corporations and other organizations of civil society strive to have their interpretations of these issues become dominant in society.

The objective of this article is to analyze the strategies or patterns of adaptation of firms for responding to environmental requirements or expectations. We specifically analyze the influence of the different pressure agents or stakeholders on the degree of proactivity of these patterns. We therefore propose and validate four types of environmental response pattern, representing particular configurations of both the scope of environmental objectives and their allocation of internal resources. The analysis, which is focused on a sample of 240 industrial firms, provides empirical evidence enabling us to identify, understand, and evaluate the impact of stakeholders on the choice of environmental response pattern. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on individual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations. E.g., "citizenship" typically implies membership in a state and an identity akin to national identity; but this connotation of citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and political virtues (or vices) for corporations--topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustainability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in the language of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory suggests that when transaction costs are low, corporations and stakeholders can minimize social costs by transacting to their mutual advantage, but when transaction costs are high, reducing social costs requires the intervention of a centralized institution. In surprisingly little work have scholars considered what happens in between--when transaction costs exist but recourse to hierarchical institution is barred. I use transaction cost analysis to hypothesize how collaboration between corporations and environmental stakeholder groups will be structured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether firms identified as potentially responsible parties (PRPs) under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (more commonly known as Superfund) appear to manipulate earnings to minimize their exposure to Superfund clean-up and transaction costs. We analyze the discretionary accrual behavior of 612 PRPs from 1981 to 1995 and increase the power of our tests by identifying those PRPs with the most incentive to manage earnings during PRP identification years. The results provide robust evidence consistent with the hypothesis that these PRPs use income-reducing discretionary accruals during PRP identification years in an attempt to minimize Superfund clean-up and transaction costs. We also consider whether PRPs' incentives to manage earnings change in response to a change in the EPA regulatory regime and find modest evidence consistent with our conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A congruence model of organizational design suggests that direct reporting relationships between plant managers and environmental quality managers, monetary incentives for environmental performance, and coordination between environmental quality managers and business strategists reduce plant-level toxic emissions. We tested these relationships in a large sample of U.S. electronics facilities. Only a link between plant manager compensation and environmental performance reduced emissions. Subsequent analyses support a reverse causality, suggesting organizational characteristics result from (rather than cause) emissions performance and that firms remain reactive on environmental issues. These findings confront theories of environmental management and congruence with provocative questions, which we discuss in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study operationalizes corporate sustainable development and examines its organizational determinants. Data for this project pertain to Canadian firms in the oil and gas, mining, and forestry industries from 1986 to 1995. I find that both resource-based and institutional factors influence corporate sustainable development. By exploring time-related effects, I also find that media pressures were important in early periods and resource-based opportunities endured over time. This finding challenges the assumption that firms first adopt innovations in response to technical rewards which are later institutionalized. These counter-intuitive results may be attributable to the unique characteristics of the dependent variable, corporate sustainable development. They raise important questions and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined how managers' perceptions of different types of stakeholder influences in the Canadian forestry industry affect the types of sustainability practices that their firms adopt. Both influences involving withholding of resources by social and ecological stakeholders and those involving directed usage of resources from economic stakeholders were found to drive such practices. We found that the industry and its stakeholders have moved beyond a focus on early stages of sustainability performance such as pollution control and eco-efficiency. However, more advanced practices, such as those involving the redefinition of business and industrial ecosystems where firms locate in a region, so that they can exchange and utilize wastes generated by other firms, are in their infancy. Stakeholders and firms in the industry are focused on the intermediate sustainability phases involving recirculation of materials and redesign of processes including sustainable harvesting of lumber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the determinants of global standardization of multinational companies' environmental policies. Survey data from the chemical industry show that MNCs standardize different environmental policy dimensions in response to pressures from different external stakeholders. MNC characteristics also affect environmental policy standardization. Findings demonstrate that the nature of stakeholder demands affects firms' responses to stakeholder pressures. Because environmental policy standardization reduces MNCs' ability to exploit cross-country differences in environmental regulations, these findings also have important implications for the self-regulation of MNCs' environmental conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying institutional theory, we argue that environmentally legitimate firms incur less unsystematic stock market risk than illegitimate firms. Firms earn environmental legitimacy when their performance with respect to the natural environment conforms to stakeholders' expectations. This relationship was supported with the analysis of media reports and stock prices of 100 firms over a five-year period. The analysis also showed that firms with low environmental legitimacy can attenuate this effect by expressing commitment to the natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]