Driving sectoral sustainability via the diffusion of organizational eco‐innovations

Using insights from institutional literature, the resource‐based theory of the firm, and internationalization, we explain variations in the diffusion of organizational eco‐innovations. Studies have previously reported that the drivers of eco‐innovation are regulatory pressures, technology push, market pull, and firm factors. But relatively little attention has been paid to nontechnological forms of eco‐innovation, such as environmental management systems (EMS). Consequently, how exactly to encourage EMS adoption across sectors is still unclear. We attempt to address this question by combining sectoral panel data (2009–2014) from a number of sources in Spain. The econometric analysis reveals that environmental policy is driving the adoption of ISO 14001 largely due to differences across sectors in energy and pollution intensity. In addition, the adoption of ISO 9001 increases the use of ISO 14001 in industry because of complementarities between the two systems. Third, in highly internationalized sectors, firms adopt a greater amount of ISO 14001.     

Really changing the course: the limitations of environmental management systems for innovation

The paper broadens the scope of environmental management system (EMS) research by describing how EMSs can contribute to inertia in present production systems. In conjunction with other factors this inertia can inhibit dramatic shifts toward more sustainable technologies and systems. Our approach builds upon technological lock‐in theory, which focuses on market coordination and technological interdependencies as generators of inertia in technological systems. Building on this framework, we call attention to previously under appreciated non‐market social forces and institutional structures that can further reinforce lock‐in. We argue that the co‐evolutionary mechanisms that generate increasing returns for physical technologies may also be applied to social technologies, such as management systems. The paper describes the emergence of ‘EMS lock‐in’ as a path dependent evolution occurring within the context of the larger quality management paradigm. While EMS may initially produce improvements in environmental performance, EMS may also constrain organizational focus to the exploitation of present production systems, rather than exploring for superior innovations that are discontinuous. The paper questions the enthusiastic private and public sector support for EMS implementation and instead recommends an ambidextrous management approach that integrates foresight and broader stakeholder collaboration. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Two are Better Than One: The Link Between Management Systems and Business Performance

Little is known about the complementary performance benefits associated with facilities’ combined use of both quality management systems (QMSs) and environmental management systems (EMSs), and how these performance benefits might differ from those associated with facilities’ use of only one of these management systems (or neither). We suggest that complementarities arise because each management system fosters the development of internal capabilities that facilitates the adoption and routine operationalization of the other, while maintaining differentiated goals that enhance strategic value. We examine these relationships using a sample of 2619 manufacturing facilities operating within six OECD countries, while controlling for self‐selection issues. Our findings support the idea of complementarity, in that facilities that adopt both QMS and EMS are more associated with positive business performance than facilities that adopt either a QMS or an EMS on its own, or no management system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The ‘win–win’ paradigm and stakeholder integration

Firms are under pressure to invest in environmental management systems (EMSs) to reduce the environmental impacts of their activities. Many advocates of EMS adoption promote the idea of ‘win–win’ gains, where improvements in environmental performance are accompanied by financial rewards. The empirical evidence on this is mixed and suggests that the' right' conditions must exist within the firm for genuine environmental performance gains to materialize. The paper uses a survey of 129 Spanish manufacturing firms to investigate managerial perceptions about what these right conditions might be. Results indicate that enhanced environmental performance following EMS adoption is linked to managers' belief in the win–win paradigm, and that managers who adhere to the win–win story also tend to integrate other stakeholder demands into their business strategies. Policy implications conclude the paper. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Environmental commitment and manufacturing excellence: a comparative study within Canadian industry

The development of an environmental policy represents the cornerstone of an environmental management system (EMS), an essential tool that helps companies both systematically manage their environmental obligations and risks, and promote these objectives throughout the entire organization. The implementation of such policies must rest not solely upon the development of specific pollution‐reduction programmes but also upon more encompassing issues dealing with the examination of existing management systems and work procedures. This paper presents the results of a study conducted in 250 manufacturing firms. It examines factors such as manufacturing policies and competitive positioning in their role as driving forces behind environmental commitment. The study's results demonstrate that environmental commitment is often linked to sound management practices. Good relations with both employees and suppliers, participatory management and total quality management programmes appear to be intimately correlated with the existence of an environmental policy. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Factors for succeeding in ISO 14001 implementation in Italian construction industry

The main aim of this research is to find the most relevant factors for a successful ISO 14001 implementation in the construction industry. Thousands of companies, including those in the construction industry, are interested in an ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS). Italy holds one of the largest databases of ISO 14001 certified organisations; in this database, the construction industry represents the second largest sector. Using a questionnaire, the research tested six potential factors that affect the success of an ISO 14001 EMS implementation. Moreover, the quantitative results were discussed together with qualitative notes left by respondents. The results showed that only three out of the six factors really affect ISO 14001 EMS implementation in the construction industry: involvement of employees, top management commitment, and development of environmental technical skills. It seems that the respondents perceived that economic and financial results, identification of environmental aspects and impacts, and the involvement of stakeholders have a limited or null effect on ISO 14001 implementation. Particular issues concerning developing workers' awareness, evaluating all the environmental impacts, and obtaining real economic advantages were raised in the respondents' comments. Conclusions highlight specific contributions for practitioners and other stakeholders involved in EMS.     

Green innovation to respond to environmental regulation: How external knowledge adoption and green absorptive capacity matter?

Although environmental regulations have been considered as important forces of conducting green innovation, how and under what conditions they affect green innovation are still unclear. Drawing from institutional theory, this study used survey data from 237 manufacturing firms in China to investigate how two dimensions of environmental regulations (i.e., command and control regulation and market‐based regulation) affect green product innovation and green process innovation. Further, this article examined the mediating role of external knowledge adoption and the moderating role of green absorptive capacity. Our results indicate that both command and control regulation and market‐based regulation have positive influences on external knowledge adoption. External knowledge adoption fully mediates these positive relationships. In addition, green absorptive capacity only strengthens the positive impact of market‐based regulation on external knowledge adoption. Our study contributes to institutional theory and green innovation literature.     

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN THE MINERALS INDUSTRY: THEORY AND PRACTICE

The minerals industry has a high public profile and applications for new planning permissions often attract considerable controversy. Minerals operations generate a wide range of environmental impacts from the extraction, processing, storage and transportation of the mineral and mineral products. Minerals operators have long recognised the importance of environmental issues and the industry associations have published a number of environmental codes of practice which give general guidance for performance in this field. The recent development of the BSI and CEC standards for environmental management systems (EMS) has provided a mechanism for operators to achieve better control of environmental performance and to demonstrate this through certification. The paper reports on a study of 100 UK minerals companies, carried out by questionnaire, to investigate the rate of progress in this industry with development of EMS and preferences in relation to the two standards currently available. The findings of the survey indicate a relatively high level of activity in the EMS field, perhaps suggesting that many companies have been developing systems based on environmental policies and practices already adopted. Despite this, the survey identified a clear need for more detailed guidance on common standards of environmental performance. Few companies have undertaken any assessment of the cost benefits of the EMS work carried out and some possible interpretations of this are discussed.     

Seeing the Need for ISO 14001

ABSTRACT    Many firms worldwide have adopted environmental management systems, and some have taken the extra step and had their systems certified for the international standard ISO 14001. While institutional pressures and market demand often motivate firms to adopt an EMS, the reasons why they certify for ISO 14001 are less clear. In this study, we interviewed members of the Canadian pulp and paper industry who had either an EMS or ISO 14001 certification to understand why they may have become ISO 14001 certified. We found that task visibility and environmental impact opacity lead to differences in a firm's approach to ISO 14001 certification in the absence of coercive pressures.     

Outcomes of Environmental Management Systems: the Role of Motivations and Firms’ Characteristics

This article analyzes the influence of the sources of motivation that lead companies to adopt environmental management systems (EMSs) on the outcomes of these systems. A set of hypotheses derived from an extensive review of the literature is analyzed using cluster analysis – in order to identify groups of companies – as well as correlation and regression analyses, with data obtained from a survey of 361 Spanish organizations that have environmental certification. The results reveal that, for the groups identified, companies from the holistic cluster (with high levels of both internal and external drivers) and from the internal focus cluster (with more intensive internal sources of motivation) secure greater benefits from the process of adopting an EMS. This article also sheds light on the influence on the outcomes of some variables that have been under‐researched, such as the economic resources invested in an EMS and whether or not the certified companies belong to a sector with high environmental pressure. The findings help to characterize the firms with environmental certification and may also help managers, policy makers and other stakeholders to anticipate the potential benefits of EMSs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Changing Trends in Regional Economic Development Policy Governance: The Case of Northern Ontario,Canada

This article analyses the changing trends in regional economic development policy delivery in multilevel governance systems. Although the imperatives of coordination of public policy interventions across multiple levels has generally been recognized, not enough attention has been given to how different political systems actually adapt their institutional and policy designs to effectively operate in the emergent complexity of multilevel governance systems. The article focuses on regional economic development policy governance in the province of Ontario, Canada over the past three decades, drawing insights from new regionalism, organization theory and governance literature to examine the prospects and challenges of policy delivery in politically complex multilevel systems. The case study illustrates how regional economic development policy is increasingly dictated by complex environmental and institutional forces of multilevel governance that are shaped by the particular character of a political system.     

Institutional-based antecedents and performance outcomes of internal and external green supply chain management practices

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has been a developing topic for at least a couple of decades. Over this time, significant complexities have been observed in its management. Helping to simplify and understand these complexities is necessary from both a practical and research perspective. Given this situation and to further enhance understanding of the topic and even supply chain management in general, this paper develops and empirically tests a theoretical model on the different types of institutional pressures motivating manufacturing enterprises to pursue green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and commensurate performance outcomes. Using a sample of 396 Chinese manufacturers, path analysis is used to evaluate the many structural links. The statistic results show that institutional pressures have driven the manufacturer adoption of internal GSCM practices which in turn relate to their external GSCM practices adoption. The statistic results also suggest that GSCM practices do not directly affect economic performance, but can improve it indirectly. This research contributes to the literature on institutional theory in corporate environmental practices. The research findings provide useful insights for managers seeking to adopt GSCM practices. The results also provide policy insights for professional organizations, regulators, and legislators to further promote GSCM.     

Some antecedent factors that shape actors’ adoption of enterprise systems

This paper proposes a conceptual model based on technology-organization-environment (T-O-E) and institutional frameworks and examines how the traditional and isomorphic factors explain adoption of enterprise systems (ES) by service small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in Nigeria. The model extends the T-O-E framework by integrating environmental typology with institutional changes in order to recognize homologous behavior in the social systems. Logistic regression and Wald’s statistics were used to analyze the data from field survey questionnaire administered to a purposive and snow-ball sample of 262 executives. The results show that adoption of ES is significantly influenced by organizational, technological and isomorphic factors though normative and mimetic isomorphism had negative coefficients; a unit increase in the complexity of the two attracts less analogous modeling and mimicry or vice versa. The technical, economic and legitimated elements are critical adoption determinants; thus, managers make informed decisions that improve competitive advantage when they understand the institutional homogeneity that drives less efficiency in the social structure.     

Do Institutionalized Traditions Matter During Crisis? Employee Downsizing in Korean Manufacturing Organizations

This study examines the downfall of the permanent employment tradition in South Korean manufacturing organizations in the aftermath of the 1997 East Asian economic crisis. We explore whether organizations abandon their traditional institutionalized practices under discontinuous environmental change or despite the change continue these time‐honoured practices. We examine both the organizational factors that inhibit lay‐offs and performance indicators that trigger organizations to re‐evaluate their lifetime employment practices under drastic environmental upheaval. We test our hypotheses on 574 Korean manufacturing organizations and find that under discontinuous change: (1) economic and institutional factors simultaneously apply opposite forces on organizational actions; (2) organizational factors such as poor performance on productivity and export create a need for headcount reductions while factors such as size, domestic ownership, government support, and unionization create social and institutional pressures that inhibit downsizing; and (3) prior experience with downsizing moderates the relationship between institutional factors and further downsizing.     

On the role of institutional factors in shaping working capital management policies: Empirical evidence from European listed firms

The study examines the impact of institutional factors on working capital management for a sample of 5431 European listed firms over the period 2010–2018. Employing a weighted least squares (WLS) methodology, we provide empirical evidence on the role of institutional quality in shaping the working capital policies of European listed firms. The results indicate that firms located in countries with a stronger institutional framework maintain lower levels of working capital on average. The results are robust to different subsamples of firms. The study complements the extant literature by analyzing the effects of institutional quality on working capital management, across a large number of different institutional systems specific to developed and transition economies alike. The results are useful for practitioners and policy makers in understanding the relationship between institutional quality and short-term firm-level decisions.     

Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management

This paper integrates two conceptual frameworks, utility maximization and institutional theory, to analyze voluntary corporate environmental management. The utility maximization or economic approach centers on motivations to decrease cost, increase revenue and improve manager utility. Institutional theory emphasizes how external pressures from market and non‐market constituents shape the firm's environmental efforts. We view the two frameworks as complementary and postulate a model that includes both types of influences. Survey data from six major industries consisting of a diverse set of facilities are used to estimate the effects of economic and institutional factors on a facility's use of environmental practices and pollution‐prevention activities. Our results support the hypothesized model, and show that cost barriers, management attitudes toward environmental stewardship, company ownership and external institutional forces, including competitiveness, investor and regulatory pressures, all affect a facility's environmental practices and pollution prevention activities. Findings suggest that a multifaceted policy strategy is needed to advance corporate environmental management across diverse firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

As a key concern for human survival and development, environmental issues have been widely perceived to be impacted by various political institutional factors. A considerable body of literature has attempted to investigate how different political factors affect environmental policymaking and outcomes. In this paper, we critically review related scholarly works published in peer‐reviewed economic journals in the past 30 years, with an emphasis on the empirical literature. Political institutional factors considered in this survey include corruption, the general concept and specific elements of democracy, and the vertical structure of environmental regulation authority within different levels of governments (i.e. environmental federalism). Studies focusing on the interplay of these factors are also highlighted. Based on a critical review, we provide a guide to the datasets, methodologies, and main findings of the literature. We also point out the existing gaps, and put forward suggestions for future research directions.     

Opening up the firm: What explains participation and effort in voluntary carbon disclosure by global businesses? An analysis of internal firm factors and dynamics

A voluntary climate initiative that has emerged over the past two decades as an institutional arrangement for corporations around the globe to signal and demonstrate their proactive climate leadership is the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Unlike the extant literature that has emphasized stakeholder and regulatory pressures, this paper argues that voluntary carbon disclosure is both beneficial and costly for corporations with respect to the existence of supportive management structures, explicit CSR practices, and the existence of complementary assets. Moreover, there is variation between European firms and other global businesses because of Europe's distinctive national business systems framework in conjunction with global supply chain imperatives. Empirically, this study employs a novel discrete‐continuous modeling approach to distinguish between a corporation's decision to disclose and the linked but subsequent decision of how much to disclose climate change information. Results indicate that the main drivers of participation in voluntary carbon disclosure by the Global 500 firms is the existence of senior managers and executive‐level officers and the adoption of ESG principles by global businesses. Conditional on participation, European Union‐based and other global businesses that articulate a corporate vision for environmental sustainability, adopt ESG principles, and invest in complementary assets disclose climate change strategies and emissions at higher levels than companies without these internal firm capabilities. This study has implications for national climate policy and global climate change governance more generally, both of which increasingly focus on concrete climate solutions by corporations.     

Adoption and Coverage of Performance‐Related Pay during Institutional Change: An Integration of Institutional and Agency Theories

Whether or not to adopt and how extensively to use a newly legitimized practice are discrete decisions made by firms undergoing institutional change. The aim of this paper is to identify the distinct effects of economic, social, and political factors on the adoption of performance‐related pay practices and their coverage (i.e. the proportion of employees covered by the practices) by integrating institutional and agency theories. An empirical analysis is performed with a unique sample of Korean firms that experienced the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. The results show that while performance‐related pay adoption was influenced by economic and social factors, performance‐related pay coverage was related to political factors as well as economic and social factors. This finding suggests that while firms adopt performance‐related pay practices in search of legitimacy, they do not blindly imitate such practices but rather proactively adapt them based on economic efficiency considerations. This study makes valuable contributions to research on institutionalism and remuneration by empirically identifying the conditions under which a pay practice adopted for social legitimacy fits or fails to fit the economic needs of the adopters.