Munificence,Dynamism, and Complexity: How Industry Context Drives Corporate Sustainability

Does external industry context exert an influence on the development of corporate sustainable development? In keeping with the view that environmental responsibility generates new and competitive resources for firms, we posit that three distinct industry contextual characteristics, namely munificence, dynamism, and complexity, can influence corporate environmentally responsible behaviors. Our conceptual framework is supported by empirical evidence that draws on a sample of 746 Chinese listed firms in manufacturing sectors. Our findings suggest that dynamism increases the likelihood of firms behaving in environmentally responsible ways, whereas complexity decreases this likelihood. The relationships between dynamism and environmental responsibility are stronger in firms with low levels of organizational slack. Moreover, we find that resource‐abundant firms are more likely to behave responsibly toward the natural environment in a high‐munificence industry context. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Corporate environmentalism: tracing the links between policies and performance using corporate reports and public registers

Within this paper, we consider whether it is possible to trace the links between the procedural and the substantive dimensions of corporate environmentalism using information that is in the public domain – most notably in corporate reports and in pollutant releases and transfer registers (PRTRs) such as the US Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and the EU Polluting Emissions Register (EPER). Based on an analysis of firms in the oil and gas sector, and specifically of the environmental performance of oil refineries, we find that corporate reports are of very limited value when seeking to compare and contrast levels of environmental performance at the site level, but that a significant body of useful information is provided by public registers such as the US TRI and the EU EPER. Drawing upon these data, we find significant variations in corporate environmental performance across the US and the EU, and we note the existence of significant correlations between higher levels of emissions and lower levels of employment and income in the areas where industrial facilities are located. We then discuss the relevance of our findings to broader debates on corporate environmentalism and corporate social responsibility. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Exploring the relationship between environmental orientation and brand value: is there fire or only smoke?

This paper investigates whether a firm's environmental orientation influences corporate brand value. In the discussion on sustainable development, corporate participation is a given, and increasingly firms are adopting environmental policies and practices. This paper observes corporate environmentalism from two perspectives: environmental embeddedness – the level to which environmental values are incorporated in brand identity; and environmental performance – the level of a firm's accordance with environmental policies and good practices. Cross‐analysis of these two perspectives generates four types of corporate environmental orientation: leaders, performers, advocates and laggards. The results do not provide conclusive evidence for whether consumers reward environmental leaders and punish environmental laggards by converting their environmental opinions into brand perceptions and purchasing decisions. It is believed that the hypothesized relationships are moderated and mediated by other stimuli, so managers are advised not to negate corporate social responsibility, but rather to invest wisely in environmental activities and its communication. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Do environmental,social, and governance activities improve corporate financial performance?

This study investigated the relationship between corporate efficiency and corporate sustainability to determine whether firms concerned about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues can also be efficient and profitable. We applied data envelopment analysis to estimate corporate efficiency and investigated the nonlinear relationship between corporate efficiency and ESG disclosure. Evidence shows that corporate transparency regarding ESG information has a positive association with corporate efficiency at the moderate disclosure level, rather than at the high or low disclosure level. Governance information disclosure has the strongest positive linkage with corporate efficiency, followed by social and environmental information disclosure. Moreover, we explored the relationship between particular ESG activities and corporate financial performance (CFP), including corporate efficiency, return on assets, and market value. We found that most of the ESG activities reveal a nonnegative relationship with CFP. These findings may provide evidence about voluntary corporate social responsibility strategy choices for enhancing corporate sustainability.     

How do corporate environmental policy and corporate reputation affect risk‐adjusted financial performance?

The current study aims to answer dual, related questions: Does corporate environmental policy affect corporate reputation, and does this link also influence risk‐adjusted profitability and company's risk? With a comprehensive framework involving analyses of each question, among a sample of firms traced by the Reputation Institute, this study reveals several notable results, after correcting for endogeneity biases. First, environmental engagement and green product innovation are both antecedents of corporate reputation. Second, corporate reputation has a positive impact on risk‐adjusted profitability and Z score indicator of financial distress risk. Thus, corporate environmental responsibility and green practices represent cospecialized assets that enhances an intangible asset, namely, corporate reputation. The latter influence constitutes a missing link between sustainable development and the firm's financial performance. Overall, environmental engagement and corporate reputation act as insurance‐like protections of firm competitiveness.     

基于技术创新的企业文化培育研究

技术创新与企业文化是企业生存和发展不可或缺的两个重要方面。技术创新是企业赖以生存的支柱和持久发展的动力,同时又影响着企业文化的发展。而优秀的企业文化又将有力地推动着企业的技术创新活动。因此,企业如果在技术创新过程中注重培育企业文化,保持与技术创新能力的要素相协调,便能事半功倍地加大技术创新的步伐。     

Does corporate environmental responsibility engagement affect firm value? The mediating role of corporate innovation

This paper aims to construct a comprehensive corporate environmental responsibility (CER) engagement measurement to examine the relationship between CER engagement and firm value as well as explore the mediating effect of corporate innovation on this relationship based on a sample of 496 China's A‐share listed companies from 2008 to 2016. The results show that when firms start to adopt environmental regulations, CER would have a negative effect on firm value; however, at a specific level, CER would start to enhance firm value positively. In addition to this, corporate innovation plays a mediating role in the relationship between CER and firm value. Corporate innovation promotes firm value of firms with CER more than firms without CER. Overall, the findings of this paper are extremely relevant for the government, investors, and firm's managers and can be utilized for policy and investment decision making. Also, the findings encourage firms to enhance their sense of environmental responsibility in order to enhance their competitive advantages, enhance corporate innovation capabilities, and thus enhance firm value.     

Do Board's Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy and Orientation Influence Environmental Sustainability Disclosure? UK Evidence

The environmental implications of corporate economic activities have led to growing demands for firms and their boards to adopt sustainable strategies and to disseminate more useful information about their activities and impacts on environment. This paper investigates the impact of board's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and orientation on the quantity and quality of environmental sustainability disclosure in UK listed firms. We find that effective board CSR strategy and CSR‐oriented directors have a positive and significant impact on the quality of environmental sustainability disclosure, but not on the quantity. Our findings also suggest that the existence of a CSR committee and issuance of a stand‐alone CSR report are positively and significantly related to environmental sustainability disclosure. When we distinguish between firms with high and low environmental risk, we find that the board CSR/sustainability practices that affect the quantity (quality) of environmental sustainability disclosure appear to be driven more by highly (lowly) environmentally sensitive firms. These results suggest that the board CSR/sustainability practices play an important role in ensuring a firm's legitimacy and accountability towards stakeholders. Our findings shed new light on this under‐researched area and could be of interest to companies, policy‐makers and other stakeholders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Exploring an innovative pivot: How green training can spur corporate sustainability performance

In general, studies on green innovation practices have primarily taken an innovation view to study the costs and benefits to firms. What has been less examined, however, is how green training spurs the intentions and advantages of green innovation. Thus, this paper explores how and when green training influences the likelihood of firms to achieve sustainability performance by using organizational learning theory. Using a dataset of 231 Chinese manufacturing firms, our work shows that green training is positively correlated to corporate sustainability performance via the indirect effect of green innovation behavior. We also find an increasingly positive indirect effect that is conditional on ambidextrous learning; specifically, this indirect effect is least positive for firms with lower ambidextrous learning capacity but stronger for those firms having higher ambidextrous learning capacity. We hold that the key to spurring corporate sustainability performance through green training lies mainly in advancing firms' green innovation behaviors and persistently enhancing their capacities for ambidextrous learning. Thus, this study offers not only new theoretical insights for understanding the effect of green training on corporate sustainability performance but also practical implications for improving corporate sustainability performance within a green economy context.     

The interplay of corporate entrepreneurship,environmental orientation,and performance in clean‐tech firms—A double‐edged sword

Clean‐tech innovations are an important driver in solving global issues such as climate change and for the sustainable development of economies around the world. Whereas a large part of the literature focuses on clean‐tech ventures, less is known on corporate entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurial behavior in established firms and its relation to sustainability. This paper extends the sustainable entrepreneurship debate to corporate entrepreneurship, which represents a fruitful avenue to further developing clean technologies. We focus particularly on clean‐tech firms' organizational preparedness for corporate entrepreneurship (OPCE), that is, how well a firm's structures and processes are set for entrepreneurial activities. On the basis of contingency theory, this study investigates how the level of OPCE influences the environmental and financial performance of clean‐tech firms and whether their environmental orientation affects these relationships. Building on data from 103 firms, we find support for a positive effect of OPCE on both environmental and financial performance. Both effects are stronger the higher the external environmental orientation. In contrast, the leverage of internal environmental orientation is not equally positive. Our study reveals that the effect of OPCE on financial performance diminishes for firms that are more strongly driven by an internal than an external environmental orientation.     

Monitoring effect of transparency: How does government environmental disclosure facilitate corporate environmentalism?

Environmental information transparency is a key policy instrument in environmental governance, which has been emphasized in most of the literature. Although a large body of research has focused on its role at the national or industrial level in the developed countries, few studies have extended it to emerging economies and tested its role in the subnational context. In this paper, we have empirically examined how government environmental disclosure shapes corporate environmentalism in the context of China. It is argued that the information transparency of government environmental disclosure can promote corporate environmentalism by providing supports for governments' decision‐making of environmental governance, the activeness of environmental nongovernment organizations, and the participation of general public in environmental issues. Especially, we have highlighted two kinds of influences on focal relationship: booster role of bureaucratic capability in the diffusion of environmental institutional pressure and receiver role of organization slack and industrial competition in the perception of environmental institutional pressure. Using a panel dataset of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2008 to 2015, a positive relationship between government's environmental information transparency and corporate environmentalism is found. In addition, our result has shown that this relationship will be stronger for regions where government bureaucracy capabilities are stronger. This study contributes to understanding of the process of firms' strategic choice facing environmental and institutional changes in emerging economies.     

Environmental,Social and Governance Reporting in China

What is the current state of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and what is the relation between ESG reporting and the financial performance of Chinese companies? This study analyses corporate ESG disclosure in China between 2005 and 2012 by analysing the members of the main indexes of the biggest Chinese stock exchanges. After discussing theories that explain the ESG performance of firms such as institutional theory, accountability and stakeholder theory we present uni‐ and multivariate statistical analyses of ESG reporting and its relation to environmental and financial performance. Our results suggest that ownership status and membership of certain stock exchanges influence the frequency of ESG disclosure. In turn, ESG reporting influences both environmental and financial performance. We conclude that the main driver for ESG disclosure is accountability and that Chinese corporations are catching up with respect to the frequency of ESG reporting as well as with respect to the quality. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Is environmental innovation conducive to corporate financing? The moderating role of advertising expenditures

Environmental innovation is an important way for firms to achieve sustainable development and acquire resources. Based on the stakeholder, resource dependence, and signal transmission theories, this study divided environmental innovation into substantive and strategic eco‐innovation and constructed a relationship model among environmental innovation, advertising expenditures, and corporate financing. Selecting 162 Chinese manufacturing listed companies from 2012 to 2017 as the research sample and adopting the multiple regression analysis method, the study found that substantive eco‐innovation had a positive effect on corporate financing, but strategic eco‐innovation had a significant negative effect on corporate financing. Further, advertising expenditures played a positive moderating role between substantive eco‐innovation, strategic eco‐innovation, and corporate financing. The robustness test further confirmed these results.     

Corporate Innovation and Competitive Environment

Empirical studies have shown that the characteristics of the competitive environment influence the corporate innovation activities of U.S. firms. This study attempts to internationalize these studies in two ways. First, it examines the environment-corporate innovation relationship in Norwegian manufacturing firms. Second, it examines how the firms’ corporate innovation activities are influenced by their international activities. Results indicate that environment and internationalization are positively related to corporate innovation, but models developed using U.S. firms may not be generalizable to firms from other countries.     

Can voluntary environmental regulation promote corporate technological innovation?

The impact of environmental regulation on technological innovation has been widely discussed in the academic circle. Based on the panel data of 403 Chinese manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2015, this paper explored the role of voluntary environmental regulation in technological innovation. The results showed the following: First, both voluntary environmental information disclosure and environmental management system certification had a positive effect on corporate innovation investment. Second, compared with the impact of environmental information disclosure, the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate innovation investment was more significant. Third, there was a significant positive interaction between environmental information disclosure and environmental management system certification. Finally, the effect of voluntary environmental regulation on corporate technological innovation in heavily polluting industries was stronger than that in lightly polluting industries.     

The political bottom line: the emerging dimension to corporate responsibility for sustainable development

This paper explores the idea that businesses are being moved to proactively manage their political activities and influence in relation to their often‐expressed responsibility for promoting sustainable development, which we define as managing the ‘political bottom line’. We argue that three key drivers account for this shift: first, the growing criticism of voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives; second, the increasing awareness and targeting of corporate political activities, and third, a realization among certain corporate executives and financiers that, without changes to public policies, an individual company's own voluntary responsibility may not deliver sufficient commercial returns. We describe several initiatives on public policy dimensions of sustainable development, which indicate that some companies are beginning to manage their political power in light of societal concerns. In conclusion, we discuss the potential and limits of a ‘political bottom line’ concept by critiquing the mainstream triple bottom line discourse.Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Managerial perceptions of corporate environmentalism: interpretations from industry and strategic implications for organizations

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important in organization theory and practice. Corporate environmentalism is emerging as a process of addressing environmental issues facing business firms. In this paper I examine managerial perceptions of corporate environmentalism and describes how key organizational members interpret the relationship between their firm and the biophysical environment. Corporate environmental orientation and environmental strategy focus are two themes of corporate environmentalism that emerge from the study. I discuss managerial perceptions of regulatory forces, public environmental concern, top management commitment and need for competitive advantage, and how perceptions of these factors might translate into environmental strategies. I conclude by discussing implications of corporate environmentalism for organizational theory and practice.     

Do board sustainability committees contribute to corporate environmental and social performance? The mediating role of corporate social responsibility strategy

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board sustainability committees on environmental and social performance and to examine the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy on the relationship between the presence of board sustainability committees and corporate sustainability performance. Using data of U.K. listed firms for the period of 2009–2016, the study employs panel regression analysis and bootstrapping techniques to test study hypotheses. The results suggest that the presence of a sustainability committee improves the effectiveness of CSR strategies. The results also indicate that firms with effective CSR strategies exhibit better environmental and social performance. Further, the empirical results show that the effectiveness of CSR strategy explains the positive relationship between board sustainability committees and corporate environmental and social performance, thus supporting the theoretical framework of the study. The findings of the study shed new light on this research direction and could be of interest to board members, managers, practitioners, investors, policy makers, and regulators that plan to promote sustainability practices and strategies needed for sustainable development.     

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.     

Victim or Victimizer: Firm Responses to Government Corruption

What is the relationship between government corruption and firm performance? To address this question, I conduct a review of articles published in the leading management journals on government‐business interactions pertaining to rent‐seeking activities and integrate findings from the fields of international business, social issues in management, public organization, institutional change, and corporate political activity. I find that while much empirical work corroborates the earlier findings suggesting a corrosive impact of government corruption on firm performance in general, management research also points to the heterogeneous impact of government corruption on individual firm performance, driven by the strategic activities conducted by firms in response to corruption. I propose an integrative model of firm strategy vis‐à‐vis corruption that predicts the activity choice of the firm as predicated by its organizational structure, political resources, industry regulation, and surrounding political and social institutions.