The impact of product market competition on corporate environmental responsibility

Although the mainstream of current thinking in the business literature recognizes that firms should invest in environmental responsibility, the theory on how product market competition affects firms’ environmental responsibility remains undeveloped. Using cost-benefit analysis, we hypothesize that the relationship between product market competition (i.e., differential industry-level competition and heterogeneous firm-level market power) and corporate environmental responsibility (CER) will be curvilinear. We find support for this hypothesis through an empirical test on a panel of 792 listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in China. The results show that (1) either too much or too little industrial competition and (2) either too much or too little firm-level market power lead to lower environmental responsibility. Our results reveal that CER is strategically chosen and related to competitive situations.     

Is doing good good for you? how corporate charitable contributions enhance revenue growth

This study examines the impact of corporate philanthropy growth on sales growth using a large sample of charitable contributions made by U.S. public companies from 1989 through 2000. Applying Granger causality tests, we find that charitable contributions are significantly associated with future revenue, whereas the association between revenue and future contributions is marginally significant at best. We then identify the mechanism underlying our findings. Our results are particularly pronounced for firms that are highly sensitive to consumer perception, where individual consumers are the predominant customers. In addition, we document a positive relationship between contributions and customer satisfaction. Overall, our evidence suggests that corporate philanthropy, under certain circumstances, furthers firms' economic objectives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种战略性选择：企业慈善社会责任

西方企业普遍实行战略性慈善捐助，强调企业的慈善捐助行为与企业相关利益者利益的兼容性。迈克尔·波特将其竞争优势理论运用于企业慈善行为的分析，最终形成独树一帜的战略性企业慈善行为理论。企业慈善捐助应该以一种能增加企业资源和利润的方式来进行，这对于我国企业选择承担慈善社会责任的模式有重要启示。中国企业应增强对慈善捐助在企业发展战略中地位的认识，把履行企业慈善社会责任与企业发展战略统一起来，作为一种战略性选择。     

Stepping across for social approval: Ties to independent foundations' boards after financial restatement

Research Summary: Integrating research on independent philanthropy and organizational misconduct, we argue that affiliations with independent foundations provide social approval benefits for firms that restate their financials. We use a panel of S&P 500 companies from 2004 to 2011 to investigate the addition of foundation board ties by restating firms. CEOs of restating firms add more new foundation board ties than CEOs of non‐restating firms, while existing corporate philanthropy and greater corporate reputation diminish this effect. We also find that new ties to foundations boards influences media tenor for restating firms more than it does for non‐restating peers. Our study offers a nuanced analysis of the post‐crisis actions of restating firms relative to non‐restating peers and highlights the relevance of ties to nonprofit boards for corporate governance. Managerial Summary: Firms oftentimes fire their top executives in the aftermath of misconduct, but such response is itself disruptive for the firm's operations. Instead, we suggest that forging ties to independent foundations can help firms in such contexts without unsettling effects. Our results show that, after a restatement event, CEOs of misconduct firms are especially likely to join new foundation boards as trustees and thus seem to be aware of the benefits of these associations. CEOs from firms with existing in‐house philanthropy or a high reputation do not join as many new foundations' boards of trustees. We also find that new firm‐foundation links are promptly and positively evaluated by the media, thus helping misconduct firms regain social approval.     

Who is governing whom? Executives,governance, and the structure of generosity in large U.S. firms

We examine how organizational structure influences strategies over which corporate leaders have significant discretion. Corporate philanthropy is a strategic activity commonly managed through a specific, differentiated organizational structure—the corporate foundation—that formalizes and constrains the influence of individual senior managers and directors on corporate strategy. Our analysis of Fortune 500 firms from 1996 to 2006 shows that characteristics of senior management and directors affect corporate philanthropic contributions. We also find that organizational structure constrains the philanthropic influence of board members, but not of senior managers, a result contrary to what existing theory would predict. We discuss how these findings advance understanding of how organizational structure and corporate leadership interact and how organizations can more effectively realize the strategic value of corporate social responsibility activities.     

From crisis to opportunity: environmental jolt,corporate acquisitions,and firm performance

This study incorporates the external environmental context into the study of corporate acquisitions by examining the performance implications of corporate acquisitions during an environmental jolt that alters the levels of environmental munificence. We posit that compared to the periods before and after an environmental jolt, corporate acquisitions during a jolt would be positively related to firm performance. Furthermore, we suggest that organizational slack would improve firm performance and accentuate the positive relationship between corporate acquisitions and firm performance during an environmental jolt; however, it would have negative impact on firm performance and make the acquisition‐performance relationship more negative before and after a jolt. Using the Asian Economic Crisis as a natural experiment, we found general support for our core arguments based on a sample of firms from Hong Kong and Singapore. Our work demonstrates that firms can capitalize on the opportunities created by the changes in an environmental jolt. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reaching through the fog: Institutional environment and cross‐border giving of corporate foundations

Research Summary : Corporate philanthropy has long been recognized as an important part of multinational strategy, yet we know relatively little how charitable giving is allocated across countries. Using a sample of 208 U.S.‐based corporate foundations from 1993 to 2008, we find that the foundations give more in countries with opaque institutional environments, but they do so through international intermediaries. They also give more when the funding firms have new entries in countries with weak institutions—hence greater needs for the social license to operate—or when their operations require stronger connections with local suppliers or customers. These findings point to the use of corporate philanthropy as part of corporate diplomacy when the local institutions are ineffective and the importance of reaching out to local constituents is high. Managerial Summary : Corporate foundations play an important role in firms' charitable giving across countries. This article analyzes how foundation giving is associated with the funding firm's need to navigate the local business environments. Using a sample of 208 U.S.‐based corporate foundations from 1993 to 2008, we find that foundations give more in countries characterized by weak rule of law and high levels of corruption, and when the funding firms have newly established subsidiaries or stronger need to connect with local stakeholders there. However, donations to countries with weak institutions are more likely to go through international intermediaries to avoid potential liabilities. The results are consistent with the view that corporate foundations support corporate diplomacy and help obtain the social license to operate in the host countries.     

Understanding the impact of symbolic and substantive environmental actions on organizational reputation

Research in corporate environmental practices has shown that stakeholders impose coercive and normative forces that drive firms to perform environmental protection actions. However, limited attention has been placed on how different constituents of stakeholders value the firm's environmental actions. By focusing on industry peers as a constituent of stakeholders, we examine how the firm's environmental actions impact its reputation. Based on institutional theory and signaling theory we propose that symbolic environmental actions negatively affect reputation, whereas substantive actions improve firm's reputation among its peers. Building on the notion of signaling process, the authors also observe that a firm's reporting practices moderate positively the negative effect of symbolic actions. Data from a sample of 213 publicly traded firms operating in polluting industries from 2006 to 2013 support these results. The findings emphasize the danger of using symbolic actions to signal environmental commitment in a context of high-involvement information search and opportunistic behaviors.     

Government's green grip: Multifaceted state influence on corporate environmental actions in China

Research summary: Emerging economies such as China enjoy economic expansion, but also face dramatic environmental challenges. China's government is a central actor in both stimulating economic activities and pursuing environmental protection. Drawing on panel data and in‐depth interviews, we examined the influence of the Chinese state at multiple levels on the environmental actions of publicly listed firms. The results show that corporate environmental actions follow an inverted U‐shape as control of environmental practices moves from the central government to the most decentral administrative level. This curvilinear relationship is positively moderated by the stringency of environmental regulation and negatively moderated by environmental monitoring capacity. We conclude that state influence on corporate environmental actions in China is multifaceted and subject to “policy‐policy decoupling.” Managerial summary: As China's environmental awareness is growing, the country's government is increasingly concerned with the question as to how it can improve the environmental performance of the firms it controls. Our evidence shows the concurrence of two contravening government influences on corporate environmental practices: a performance‐enhancing effect of the regulatory pressure by multiple authorities and a performance‐diminishing effect of the autonomy enjoyed by local governments. Both the most centrally and the most decentrally controlled firms in China show significantly weaker environmental performance than those controlled by intermediary levels of government. The stringency of sectorial environmental regulation and environmental monitoring capacity affect the strength of the Chinese government's green grip.     

Inducing Innovation in the Environmental Technology of Oligopolistic Firms

This paper characterizes environmental regulations which induce polluting Bertrand competitors to invest efficiently in environmental R&D. Post–innovation benefits to raising rivals' costs provide firms with incentives to innovate. Although optimal behavior cannot be elicited with pollution taxes alone, an optimum can be achieved by combining emission taxes with environmental performance standards that are higher for firms which reveal superior environmental technologies. Faced with this policy, successful innovators voluntarily reveal their technological discovery to the government, despite the apparent regulatory penalty that results. Implications for automotive fuel regulation are discussed.     

企业慈善捐赠带来价值回报吗——以利益相关者满足程度为调节变量的上市公司实证研究

慈善捐赠与企业价值之间的关系是企业社会责任研究关注的热点问题。本文就利益相关者满足程度对慈善捐赠影响企业价值的调节作用,进行了理论分析和实证检验。利用中国A股上市公司2002—2008年慈善捐赠的面板数据,研究发现,慈善捐赠价值效应以利益相关者满足程度为条件,即利益相关者满足程度越高时,慈善捐赠提升企业价值的效果才会越明显。进一步的研究表明,企业资源与董事会治理水平以及市场化程度,分别弱化和强化了利益相关者满足程度在慈善捐赠价值效应中的调节作用。本研究为评价慈善捐赠对企业价值的影响提供了更深层次的思考,对企业更好地履行慈善捐赠责任亦有重要启示。     

企业捐赠作用的综合解析

本文提出一个综合的理论解释框架,将捐赠作用划分为四类:合法保护——企业通过捐赠购买利益相关者的“伤害权,”提高组织的合法性,减少企业经营中的不确定性,维持企业正常运行;伤害保险——慈善捐赠将形成积极的道德资本,当企业经营活动伤害到利益相关者时,道德资本能降低受害者制裁/报复企业的强度,并减少企业关系资产的损失;间接增值——慈善捐赠可以通过改善企业与利益相关者的关系来间接提升企业绩效;直接增值——精心设计的战略性慈善捐赠可以改善企业经营环境,直接提升企业绩效。     

Winning us with trifles: Adverse selection in the use of philanthropy as insurance

Research Summary: We study the use of corporate philanthropy as a form of reputation insurance, developing a formal model of such insurance to examine how the terms of insurance in equilibrium change under different assumptions about the firm and its stakeholders. We then test the predictions from this model in the U.S. petroleum industry and find that philanthropic donations offer insurance‐like benefits, but are also positively associated with subsequent oil spills—firms that give more, spill more—with this association being stronger for spills that are under firms’ control and in states with low civic capacity. These results are consistent with an adverse selection/moral hazard equilibrium and suggest that the use of philanthropy as reputation insurance may benefit firms at the cost of society. Managerial Summary: Firms that donate to social causes develop a reputation for being socially responsible, and are often given the benefit of doubt when negative information about them comes to light. But are philanthropic firms truly more responsible? We argue that firms that donate more may be more likely to do harm—those that expect to do harm later are likely to give more now, and those that know their reputation protects them may become less careful. Evidence from the U.S. petroleum industry is consistent with this argument, with firms that give more having more subsequent oil spills, but only the type of spills that are under the firm's control, and only in states where the firm faces weaker scrutiny.     

Corporate reputation and customer behavioral intentions: The roles of trust, identification and commitment

How does corporate reputation influence customer behavioral intentions? This article proposes a model with customer trust, customer identification and customer commitment as the key intervening factors between corporate reputation and customer purchase intention and willingness to pay a price premium. We test the model by using data from 351 customers of three Chinese B2B service firms. Results indicate that corporate reputation has positive influence on both customer trust and customer identification. Customer commitment mediates the relationships between the two relational constructs (customer trust and customer identification) and behavioral intentions. Customer identification and customer commitment relate closely, but they are distinct constructs in the B2B setting.     

期望落差下的组织搜索:长期债务融资及其价值再造

企业在何种状态下采取长期负债经营策略以及这种策略将对企业未来的发展产生何种影响,是一个重要的理论问题。本文将企业的长期债务融资视为组织搜索行为,构建了一个绩效反馈的权变模型,探讨期望落差与长期债务融资之间的理论关系及制约因素。本文基于2007—2018年中国上市企业数据的检验结果表明:期望落差将对企业长期债务融资产生直接影响。在企业管理者搜索动机与搜索成本的共同作用下,企业的长期债务融资与期望落差程度呈非线性关系,即在临近期望值的状态下企业管理者表现出局部搜索动机,倾向于通过增加债务来解决企业的期望落差问题;而在远离期望值的状态下表现出非局部搜索动机,倾向于减少长期债务融资。环境不确定性是制约期望落差下企业长期债务融资策略的重要因素,市场与政策环境的不确定性越高,则越有可能导致处于落差状态下的企业减少长期债务融资。期望落差状态下的长期债务融资与企业价值再造能力之间存在着先升后降的“倒U型”关系,即落差状态下适度的长期债务融资提高了企业的价值能力,但超过临界点后将对价值再造起到遏制作用。本文在一定程度上丰富了期望落差下组织搜索的过程机制,为深入理解企业长期负债经营的前因提供了新的视角。     

出口行为如何影响企业环境绩效

本文首次采用中国制造业企业层面的能源消耗和产出微观数据,利用细分能源类型的二氧化碳排放因子换算得到微观企业环境绩效指标,即单位产出的二氧化碳排放量(二氧化碳排放强度),并试图以企业劳动生产率为桥梁,结合中国出口企业“生产率悖论现象”,研究中国企业出口行为对其环境绩效的影响机制。本文基于企业生产函数框架构建计量模型,实证结果表明:①出口造成中国企业二氧化碳排放强度显著增大,同时,排放强度随着企业出口密度的提高不断增长,出口并没有显著提升企业环境绩效,考虑不同生产函数形式后结论均较为稳健。②传统的“污染避难所问题”并不是造成中国出口企业二氧化碳排放强度更高的主要原因。③中国出口企业生产效率更低,进而导致更高的碳排放强度。④出口企业的低效率和低加成率(低利润率)进一步拖累了企业技术升级和环保投资,这是出口造成企业更为污染的重要原因。本文的研究弥补了贸易与中国微观企业层面环境绩效关系研究的缺口,从微观层面给予污染治理与减排策略以政策参考,证实了在国际贸易进程中不仅应制定宏观目标,还应直接着眼于微观企业,特别是促使出口企业提高自身的生产率,从而推动经济与环境的全面可持续发展。     

Political connections and corporate diversification in emerging economies: Evidence from China

Drawing upon the resource-based view, this study examines how political connections affect corporate diversification in an emerging economy. Data from a sample of 1,280 Chinese public firms over 2002?C2005 show a strong positive relationship between political connections and corporate diversification. We also find that the positive relationship between political connections and corporate diversification is moderated by the level of state ownership in firms and the level of regional institutional development. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Necessity as the mother of ‘green’ inventions: Institutional pressures and environmental innovations

Drawing on institutional theory and innovation literature, we argue that greater regulatory and normative pressures concerning environmental issues positively influence companies' propensity to engage in environmental innovation. Analysis of environment‐related patents of 326 publicly traded firms from polluting industries in the United States suggests that institutional pressures can trigger such innovation, especially in those firms displaying a greater deficiency gap (i.e., firms polluting relatively more than their industry peers). Moreover, we find that this effect is stronger when asset specificity is high, and that the availability of resources plays different roles depending on the type of pressures (regulatory vs. normative).Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate boards and outside stakeholders as determinants of environmental litigation

Each year, hundreds of firms are prosecuted for violating environmental laws and hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties are assessed. At the same time, a much larger number of firms escape the various costs associated with litigation by adhering to the provisions of the same laws and regulations. It is not a priori apparent why this dichotomy exists. In this paper we draw on corporate governance and stakeholder theories to empirically investigate environmental lawsuits. Specifically, we compare the pre‐lawsuit profile of 209 violators to a sample of matched control firms between 1994 and 1998. We find that the likelihood of becoming a lawsuit defendant increases with board size, with the fraction of directors in industrial firms, and with the fraction of inside ownership, and decreases with the number of directorships held by outside directors. These findings are robust to alternative dependent variable specifications. Together, our results suggest that managers, researchers, and policy‐makers need to direct their attention to the corporate board as the core decision‐making unit forming corporate environmental policies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of ownership concentration and corporate debt on corporate divestitures in Chinese listed firms

This study examines how ownership concentration and corporate debt impact corporate divestitures in China. Corporate divestitures reduce the asset base of a company and the opportunity for expropriation by majority shareholders. In emerging economies, weak legal institutions, combined with equity ownership concentration and high corporate debt, allow majority shareholders to avoid such disciplines. Consequently, the relationship between these governance mechanisms and divestiture activity exhibits a pattern that is different from that in developed economies. Using archival data collected from 1,210 Chinese listed companies during 1999–2003, we found that ownership concentration by the largest shareholder depressed corporate divestitures both in state-controlled and in non-state-controlled firms. The negative effect of corporate debt on divestitures only existed for state-controlled firms. Our finding provides corroborating evidence for principal–principal conflicts in emerging economies. It suggests that corporate strategy in these countries can be better explained by taking into account the unique agency problems that are prevalent in these economies.