Corporate self-greenewal: Strategic responses to environmentalism

The rise of environmentalism in the past decade has become a major transforming force in pollutive and hazard prone industries. Corporate environmental responsiveness is not simply a peripheral and one of the many ‘social’ or ‘ethical’ issues facing business. It is becoming a central concern for competitiveness, productivity, and profitability. It is creating strategic transformation of companies in a diverse range of industries such as, Autos, Chemicals, Oil, Fast Foods, Power Generation, Pharmaceuticals, etc. The process of environmentally directed self-renewal, called ‘greenewal’ here, affects all aspects of companies. It implies changes in products, production systems, waste management practices and internal systems. It seeks to make companies simultaneously more competitive and environmentally responsible. This paper describes the pressures of and responses to environmentalism in a selected set of industries. It examines the processes of greenewal that companies are undergoing. It identifies implications for strategic greening of firms.     

PURCHASING AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: INTERACTIONS,POLICIES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The mechanisms are examined by which environmentally informed business practices and technologies may diffuse through industry as a result of the ‘greening’ of purchasing and supply. The efforts of official bodies in the UK to raise environmental awareness among industrial purchasers are reviewed. It is then argued that the supply chain model is an important way of interpreting the industrial landscape from a green perspective and that it is in some ways a more hopeful and positive starting point for achieving industrial transformation. The results of an analysis of some UK companies practices in using their purchasing policies to ‘green’ their supply chains are presented and opportunities for further research indicated.     

Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

As a response to the growing public awareness on the importance of organisational contributions to sustainable development, there is an increased incentive for corporations to report on their sustainability activities. In parallel with this has been the development of ‘Sustainable HRM’ which embraces a growing body of practitioner and academic literature connecting the notions of corporate sustainability to HRM. The aim of this article is to analyse corporate sustainability reporting amongst the world's largest companies and to assess the HRM aspects of sustainability within these reports in comparison to environmental aspects of sustainable management and whether organisational attributes – principally country-of-origin – influences the reporting of such practices. A focus in this article is the extent to which the reporting of various aspects of sustainability may reflect dominant models of corporate governance in the country in which a company is headquartered. The findings suggest, first and against expectations, that the overall disclosure on HRM-related performance is not lower than that on environmental performance. Second, companies report more on their internal workforce compared to their external workforce. Finally, international differences, in particular those between companies headquartered in liberal market economies and coordinated market economies, are not as apparent as expected.     

Multinational Companies and Human Resource Management: an Overview of Research Issues1

Anthony Ferner, who is Principal Research Fellow in the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick, uses a wide range of literature and recent empirical research to examine the consequences for HRM of central facets of multinational companies – corporate structure and strategy, country of operation and country of origin. How, for example, do they impact on the degree of cross-national coordination of human resource policies? Are there distinct ‘national’ cultures that infuse these policies? How does ‘corporate culture’ interact with national management cultures of ‘host’ countries? In considering the implications of the discussion for a future research agenda, he emphasises the need to redress the overwhelming concentration in the existing literature on US and Japanese companies.     

Contributions of HRM throughout the stages of environmental management: methodological triangulation applied to companies in Brazil

The purpose of this research is to analyze the contribution of human resources management throughout the evolutionary stages of environmental management in Brazilian companies. A theoretical framework concerning environmental management and its evolution and the ‘greening’ of the functional and competitive dimensions of human resource management were developed. A methodological triangulation was developed in two complimentary phases. In the first phase, data were collected from 94 Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification. The data collected were analyzed and processed using statistical techniques. The conclusions of the first phase supported the second phase of this empirical research. The second phase consisted of a study of multiple cases in four Brazilian companies. The results show evidence of the first known empirical study of contributions of human resource dimensions throughout the stages of environmental management in Brazilian manufacturing companies.     

STRATEGY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND IT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES*

This article subjects the organizational theory literature on corporate strategy to critical scrutiny, arguing that both the ‘rational’and ‘processual’approaches to strategy generate analyses that are ahistorical and theoretically undeveloped. In their place, but focusing specifically on the financial services, we offer an alternative genealogically informed analysis. This indicates how the historical development of strategy discourses and practices are discontinuous and uneven across countries, sectors, companies and specialist spheres. In addition it suggests that corporate strategy has considerable impact on inter-organizational relations and both ‘internal’(i.e. management and employees) and ‘external’(i.e. consumers) members of the organization. the article seeks to illustrate its arguments both at the sectoral level by examining the development of strategic discourse in banks and insurance companies and at the organizational level by providing some case study material on IT strategy in a life insurance company.     

Tales in two countries: An insight into corporate environmental reporting in Denmark and the UK

The 1992 EC Fifth Action Plan, ‘Towards Sustainability’, expresses the Commission's commitment to ‘sustainable growth’. Detailed in the plan are requirements and areas of improvement which relate, predominantly, to environmental management. However, financial and environmental management conflict in important and fundamental areas. A failure of management practice and European policy to identify and address this conflict will not only prolong the ecological inefficiencies of industry but will isolate intent and action. This study examines this conflict with respect to training, operational time-horizons, opportunity costs, corporate governance and growth. The Annual Report is the authoritative statement of corporate performance, policy, objectives and culture. Although most reports do provide a broad if summary coverage of the main business activities, such reports are dominated by the needs of financial management. Extensive legislation and professional edicts dictate the contents of these financial reports. From the perspective of the Annual Report, it is a reasonable conclusion that financial performance is a part of whatever constitutes the core values of corporations. From this same perspective, it is also reasonable to infer that in many corporations environmental performance is not a part of corporate core values. This study compares and contrasts the Annual Reports of six environmentally significant companies in Denmark and the UK. The British environmental reports studied are thorough but separate from the Annual Report. On the other hand, the Danish firms incorporate all their environmental reporting within their Annual Reports. Which gives a better expression of a change in corporate core values?.     

An ‘incitement to discourse’: benchmarking as a springboard to sustainable development

Benchmarking, while belonging to the array of instruments associated with eco‐efficiency, eco‐modernism and ‘political sustainability’, provides a way in which corporations can be held to account in terms of their environmental and social responsibility. New Zealand lacked such benchmarks until the annual Survey of Corporate Environmental Responsiveness was introduced for top companies by turnover in 1999, exposing the myth of ‘clean and green’ New Zealand as far as environmental management of business was concerned, but providing a measure that has become a driver for many companies. The paper discusses outcomes of the benchmarking survey and describes how it has been employed as a Foucauldian ‘incitement to discourse’ with a focus group of participating companies, engaging them in a more dialectical discourse of sustainable development based in Critical Theory and perspectives from Foucault. Maori speak of their ‘turangawaewae’–having a ‘place to stand’. The survey provided the broader research programme with that place to stand in terms of creating a meaningful position for the researchers, and a degree of legitimacy, within the business context. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.     

Corporate greening through prosocial extrarole behaviours – a conceptual framework for employee motivation

Scholars in environmental management have called for better grounding of research on corporate greening within established organizational theories. We propose a conceptual framework (including suggestions for operationalizing it) that embeds empirical research within behavioural intent models and the concept of value‐creating prosocial behaviours. We argue that conceiving of corporate greening as a prosocial behaviour in this manner provides an improved understanding of the dominant factors that motivate employees to engage in ecoinitiatives. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

‘Policies in Motion’, Urban Management and State Restructuring: The Trans‐Local Expansion of Business Improvement Districts

This article examines the ways in which business improvement districts are being introduced into UK cities. In advancing this analysis, the focus here is on the means through which one or two Manhattan business improvement districts have been constructed as ‘models’ of urban management, taken out of their particular local/regional and national contexts and introduced into a diverse set of local political economic contexts in UK cities and towns. Examining the way business improvement districts have become a policy in motion, the article sketches out the emergence of entrepreneurial urban governance arrangements in the UK as part of the state's changing spatiality in the industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America. I argue that these changes make UK cities and towns increasingly receptive to the business improvement district model of downtown management. Seeking to move beyond the sometimes rather one‐sided representations of policies that find themselves on the move, the article seeks to connect the ‘exporting’ and ‘importing’ zones of policy transfer, arguing for an open and permeable conceptualization of these places. It draws on work in Manhattan, New York to unpack the nature of the political–economic relations that business improvement districts were part of, before moving on to examine the dynamics of policy transfer and the early days of the introduction of this downtown ‘model’ into UK cities.     

‘Down with Big Brother!’ The End of ‘Corporate Culturalism’?

Hugh Willmott's classic 1993 JMS article, ‘Strength is Ignorance; Freedom is Slavery’, has greatly influenced how we understand culture management. It draws parallel's with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty‐Four to reveal the totalitarian aspirations of ‘corporate culturalism’. While it is sometimes said that employee resistance is missing in Willmott's account, I argue that it is implicitly pervasive, prefiguring subsequent investigations of ‘micro‐emancipation’ in management studies. The recent waning of scholarly interest in this type of resistance, however, also points to the contemporary relevance of Willmott's analysis. Emergent forms of corporate regulation utilize ‘biopower’ rather than just cultural conformity, rendering micro‐emancipation inadequate, but inspiring other types of dissent.     

Engaging Hong Kong businesses in environmental change: drivers and barriers

Hong Kong's businesses have been slow to embrace environmental management principles, particularly in the SME sector. This article analyses key barriers and incentives to engaging Hong Kong businesses with voluntary environmental initiatives and compares their relevance for companies of different sizes. As in other countries, SMEs show a much lower uptake of such activities than larger companies. Their approach towards environmental management is predominantly reactive, and legislation remains the key driver for engaging them with environmental change. Inadequate government policy and support, societal attitudes and corporate culture all contribute significantly to the comparatively poor development of corporate environmental management among Hong Kong companies. As long as most SMEs regard voluntary environmental activities as costly and unnecessary ‘extras’ that endanger their competitiveness and detract resources from their core business without offering any tangible benefits, fundamental improvements in their environmental performance will be difficult to achieve. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Corporate Carbon Strategies in Responding to Climate Change

With climate change emerging as one of the most important issues affecting the business circle, companies have begun considering the carbon issue in their overall strategic positioning. However, few studies have examined the corporate carbon strategies in developing and advanced developing countries, where climate change regulation is extensive and market uncertainty is relatively high. In addition, there has been growing interest among researchers and practitioners concerning the relationship between the carbon strategy and firm performance. This paper presents a framework for identifying the corporate carbon strategy. The cluster analysis of 241 Korean companies indicates six types of corporate carbon strategy: ‘wait‐and‐see observer’, ‘cautious reducer’, ‘product enhancer’, ‘all‐round enhancer’, ‘emergent explorer’ and ‘all‐round explorer’. This study empirically examines whether there are differences between these carbon strategy types in terms of the sector, firm size and firm performance. The results indicate a significant relationship between a firm's carbon strategy and its sector and size but a significant relationship between the carbon strategy and firm performance is not confirmed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The effect of institutional pressure on cooperative and coercive ‘green’ supply chain practices

Little is known about buyers׳ decisions to implement ‘green’ supply chain management (GSCM) through either coercive or cooperative approaches. This is an important area of study as buyers are increasingly expected to improve and ensure that their purchasing and supply chain practices are environmentally sound. Pressuring and monitoring suppliers to become more environmentally responsible dominates the coercive approach to GSCM. In contrast, a cooperative approach is associated with training and helping suppliers to become ‘greener’. In this study we draw on institutional theory, and argue that the decision to implement such practices and the choice between them will be contingent upon institutional pressures (mimetic, normative and coercive), and downstream customer requirements for GSCM. Using primary survey data from 198 UK-based companies, we find compelling evidence to suggest that coercive and cooperative GSCM practices are driven by substantially different factors. Institutional pressures significantly determine cooperative approaches to GSCM while coercive practices are, to a larger extent, driven by downstream customer demands. Customer pressure is also found to moderate the influence of institutional factors on cooperative practices; no significant effect was found for coercive practices.     

Environmentally driven mode of business development: a management control perspective

A prerequisite for successful business development is that the control system is designed and used in such a way that strategically important areas can be planned and followed up. Thus, it must be possible to relate results on the quality front, for example, to the company's strategy, which is why quality systems are often integrated with the overall system of control. Environmental management systems, on the other hand, often tend to lead a life of their own, quite disconnected from the overall control system with its routines for strategic planning and follow-up. This can perhaps explain why environmental work has not become a natural part of corporate business development, despite the market for environmentally friendly products. In this article, we therefore focus particularly on control systems and their role in the promotion of an environmentally driven mode of business development. It appears that the integration of environmental management systems with other control systems has been found to be important. The tentative model presented here indicates the conditions under which such integration is possible. It also shows how a company's approach to environmentally driven business development can fall into various phases. The model includes three dimensions: (1) strategy, (2) control systems, and (3) attitude to environmental work. A number of hypotheses are formulated regarding the importance of these dimensions for the successful promotion of an environmentally driven mode of business development in large companies. The article concludes with some suggestions as to how the model can be used in further research.     

Corporate Carbon and Financial Performance: The Role of Emission Reductions

This article uses econometric techniques to examine the effect of corporate carbon performance on corporate financial performance. I extend the existing literature in this research field by differentiating between two measurement perspectives: carbon performance expressed as annually reported carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission equivalents and improvements in carbon performance over time. Thereby, the article re‐addresses the research question ‘when and how does it pay to be green?’ in the context of carbon emissions and climate change mitigation. Using a nonlinear modeling technique, the findings indicate that it pays to be green for companies with superior carbon performance but not for companies with inferior carbon performance. The results also show that carbon emission mitigation is linearly and significantly positive related to return on sales (ROS) but negatively related to Tobin's q . These contradictory findings help us to understand why – in spite of growing regulatory pressure – companies have been slow to respond with effective action to tackle climate change beyond marginal efficiency improvements that correspond to ‘low‐hanging fruits’. The empirical analysis is based on an unbalanced sample of 7625 firm‐year observations covering carbon emission data (Scope 1 and Scope 2) for 1640 international firms from 2003 to 2015. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

EXPERIENCES WITH IMPLEMENTING INTEGRATED CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN DUTCH INDUSTRY

Integrated chain management (also called ‘life cycle management’) has become a central concept in environmental policy in the Netherlands. Integrated chain management requires two essential changes in the existing pattern of production and consumption. It calls for a reduction in the use of fossil energy sources (natural gas, oil and coal) and a switch to the utilization of sustainable energy sources based on solar and wind energy. Integrated chain management further involves preventing the diffuse spread of pollution, finding substitutes for environmentally hazardous substances and retaining substances in the substance cycle for as long as possible. The insights gained in the Netherlands into how the concept of integrated chain management can be translated into day to day corporate practice are summarized. It is argued, firstly, that industry needs to conduct integrated chain analyses to identify possible options for environmental improvements extending to the whole production chain; secondly, that the results of such chain analyses will only be implemented if the concept of integrated chain management is incorporated by companies in their strategic planning; and, finally, that the implementation of environmental improvements will often require forms of strategic co-operation with external parties. It is concluded that most efforts have focused on elaborating a methodology for integrated chain analysis. The actual implementation of the specific improvement options — integrated chain management — still occurs to only a limited extent in Dutch industry.     

Diffusing ‘best practice’ in Chinese multinationals: the motivation,facilitation and limitations

With increasing global integration, the diffusion of ‘best practice’ is a critical activity in MNCs, particularly for those from developing countries which have recently joined global markets. Recent research has suggested that ‘reverse diffusion’ is an important approach to the internationalization of management. However, there is little empirical evidence in support of this argument. This paper draws on in-depth case studies of the UK subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs to explore the nature and characteristics of diffusion activities. It confirms that ‘reverse diffusion’ played a positive part in the internationalization process of these companies, although the impact on the home firms is limited. It also found that new forms of management transfer are emerging in these Chinese MNCs. This suggests that the diffusion of ‘best practice’ in MNCs can be varied with different national and organizational characteristics.     

Strategiewechsel für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen

Corporate activities and strategic decisions cause several ecological and social problems. However, companies also develop solutions, products and services to face these problems and to create social and ecological development proactively. Against the background of the far-reaching economical and societal change we need sustainable development. Implementing sustainable requirements in corporations necessitates strategic change. Thus, the question arises which influencing factors initiate pro-active or intensive sustainable strategic changes. This question will be addressed on the basis of an empirical analysis of three companies in the business fields chemistry, recycling and information & communication. The study examines the internal (organisational, cultural) and external conditions for pro-active and intensive corporate strategic change. It can be shown that there are various, but different patterns to initiate sustainable strategic changes. The findings highlight the role of visions and options, the companies’ interactions, the role of change agents and management as well as their values and norms, the companies’ history, and the history of business fields.