Environmentally sustainable or economically sustainable? The effect of Chinese manufacturing firms' corporate sustainable strategy on their green performances

Environmentally and economically sustainable strategies are predicted to influence the public perception of a firm's green performance in terms of environmental protection as well as corporate social responsibility as a whole. We empirically tested this prediction with the data from 214 Chinese manufacturing firms. Our empirical findings showed that firms' environmentally sustainable strategies are more important compared with the economic ones in shaping firms' green performances. Moreover, we also found a significant moderating effect of employees' education on the relationship between the two sustainable strategies and firms' green performances. We explain the findings and conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for academic researchers and practitioners.     

THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF VOLUNTARY ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF FIRMS: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Abstract.  New trends in studies on the governance of natural assets include substantial consideration of the role of voluntary initiatives. A traditional economic view states that there is a trade-off between being green and being competitive. According to that view, no voluntary environmental action is expected to occur. To undertake an in-depth analysis of the scope for voluntary action, this paper reviews empirical literature that analyzes the relationship between manufacturing firms' environmental initiatives or performance and economic results. This review moves beyond the general test of the 'pay to be green' hypothesis, preferring instead to systematize empirical results in more specific research questions. Empirical findings of the reviewed literature generally support that there is no penalty for being green. In addition, the typology of firms, the methods utilized for implementing environmental initiatives, the intensity of abatement efforts and stockholders' valuation of green firms have all been shown to have a sizeable influence on the actual economic results of environmental action or management. Consequently, the findings of this paper challenge the traditional strategic theory that predicts widespread free-riding; it holds major implications for environmental policy-making and environmental business decisions.     

Non‐Mandatory Approaches to Environmental Protection

The approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation‐driven, adversarial 'government‐push' approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often 'business‐led' initiatives to self‐regulate their environmental performance. This has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self‐regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms. This paper provides an overview of the non‐mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches. It also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self‐regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance. It examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance.     

Environmental Upgrading of Developing Country Firms in Global Value Chains

While the strategic management literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is abundant, it tends to consider the context of developed countries, with a focus on certain specific issues such as the strategic behaviour of firms with regard to sustainable development and the economic benefits of CSR practices. The present study examines the influence of western organizations on responsible corporate behaviour in developing countries, an issue that has been somewhat neglected in the existing academic literature. In particular, it explores the environmental upgrading of developing country firms in global value chains. This research, conducted with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, involves 24 Tunisian olive oil companies. The findings indicate that exporting companies have indeed benefited from environmental upgrading, but, because of the cooperation strategy adopted by leading western firms (imposition of standards) and the absence of financial and technical assistance, the extent of environmental upgrading remains limited. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Adopting Proactive Environmental Strategy: The Influence of Stakeholders and Firm Size

abstract While smaller firms are less likely to undertake as many environmental practices as larger firms, extant literature suggests that smaller firms may be more responsive to stakeholder pressures. This paper contributes to the development of stakeholder theory by deriving a size moderated stakeholder model and applying it to a firm's adoption of proactive environmental practices. The empirical results show that smaller firms are more responsive to value‐chain, internal, and regulatory stakeholder pressures. These findings suggest that researchers evaluating organizations and the natural environment should be cautious about associating stakeholder pressures directly with firms' environmental strategies. Rather, the relationship between stakeholder pressures and environmental strategy tends to vary with size.     

Applying the reduce,reuse, and recycle principle in the hospitality sector: Its antecedents and performance implications

Although the literature on eco-friendly strategies followed by firms is abundant, the focus on the reduce, reuse, and recycle (3Rs) policies as the cornerstone of environmental sustainability is scarce. This study examines the 3Rs environmental strategy among 143 large organizations in the hospitality industry. We use the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm theory to test the strategy's determinants and its impact on business performance on a suggested conceptualization level. As hypothesized, green corporate governance and environmental management systems, along with slack financial resources, were found to positively influence the adoption of a 3Rs environmental strategy. In turn, the implementation of the latter leads to superior business performance, measured in terms of operating profits and Tobin's Q. The study has several implications on a theoretical, managerial, and public policy level where intriguing directions for future research are provided.     

The management of sustainable development: A longitudinal analysis of the effects of environmental performance on economic performance

The literature on sustainable development has largely focused on investigating the relationship between companies' environmental and economic performance. However, many aspects remain unexplored, and empirical studies are far from reaching a consensus due to the heterogeneity of the environmental and economic measures and methodologies used. This study contributes to the literature on sustainable development by considering a panel of 998 US companies observed over the period 2003–2017 using both traditional panel data methods and an unconditional quantile regression technique. The empirical evidence confirms that environmental performance, measured in terms of environmental orientation and environmental innovation, positively affects returns on assets and equity. It also demonstrates that these returns change across quantiles and depend on the capacity of green companies to generate the same streams of income as nongreen companies but with less capital. In other words, green firms tend to be more efficient in generating future wealth.     

中小企业产业集群升级的理论与实践

中小企业产业集群升级是分析经济全球化背景下经济活动的一种崭新重要理论。关于这一问题的研究,在20世纪90年代,西方学者大多从集群生命周期、全球价值链和区域创新网络视角进行阐释。近些年国内学者也开始对产业集群升级问题进行了一些理论和实证分析。但就以往研究成果来看,大多是基于经济增长常态的确定环境下所作的探讨,而运用企业生态学研究动态环境下产业集群升级模式的文献极少。所以,本文在对中小企业产业集群升级的国内外理论文献进行重点梳理的基础上,试图作进一步的理论深化和拓展:基于金融危机影响效应的判断,通过对我国产业集群发展现实形态和结构困境的分析,提出我国中小企业产业集群升级的分层梯度式模式构想和对策建议,进而为我国形成促进区域产业集群可持续发展的机制提供理论支撑和应用例证。     

Corporate Ownership and Environmental Proactivity

The present paper advances knowledge of the drivers of firms' proactive environmental strategies. In particular, it explores the relationship between different corporate ownership structures and firms' green proactivity, in order to see whether some types of shareholder act as a stimulating driver for firms' proactive environmental behaviors. The study examines the explanatory power of corporate governance issues, such as a firm's ownership structure, as potential determinants of companies' environmental proactivity. Attention is focused on the European firms included into the Carbon Disclosure Project questionnaire 2012. The results show that ownership structure matters in firms' environmental proactivity. In particular, firms with a higher percentage of state ownership present superior green proactivity, while ownership concentration appears negatively related to proactive environmental strategy. The paper offers theoretical and practical implications. It focuses attention on a still underdeveloped research area, namely organizations and their relationship with the natural environment, including corporate ownership as a driver of a company's proactive environmental strategy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Assessing the Comprehensiveness of Supply Chain Environmental Strategies

As environmental awareness grows, firms are expected to expand the scope of their environmental strategies beyond organisational boundaries and to address more comprehensively environmental issues in their supply chains and product life cycles. Drawing on different literature streams, international standards and corporate disclosure, this paper presents a conceptual framework for the quantitative assessment of the comprehensiveness of firms' environmental strategies. This framework allows us to capture: (i) the environmental inputs and outputs addressed, (ii) the firm versus supply chain orientation of environmental strategies, and (iii) the environmental management practices adopted by companies. We illustrate the application of this framework with a content analysis of corporate sustainability reports for a cross‐sectoral sample of sustainability leaders. Our results indicate that there is a need for greater specificity in environmental reporting and that, overall, companies remain firm‐oriented. It is also observed that supply chain orientation can generally be associated with stakeholder pressure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW FOR GREEN PRODUCT TERM: FROM DEFINITION TO EVALUATION

Nowadays, interest in corporate environmental strategies shifts from cleaner processes to the holistic nature of green products. The relevant literature argues that firms have the opportunity to pioneer through green product innovation, allowing them to differentiate and thus gain competitive advantage. Environmental burden of products during their entire life cycle is undeniable. Due to the weakness of the existing literature that inadequately addresses a commonly accepted green product definition, as well as the thereby caused inconclusive academic empirical results on firms' competitiveness, there are many cases of businesses greenwashing behavior. The overall contribution of this exploratory paper, on determining and evaluating the degree of greenness of a product, is twofold; first, starting with a systematic literature review, authors further contribute by proposing an integrative definition that addresses the so far existing terminological gap. Next, after reviewing the existing environmental assessment tools, authors based on the developed definition and in accordance to its dynamic dimension contribute to the existing methodology, as the paper reveals issues that need to be considered in the evaluation of green products.     

Environmental Management of End‐of‐Life Products: Nine Factors of Sustainability in Collaborative Networks

The paradigm of the green economy has contributed to raising the attention paid to developing sustainability‐oriented strategies for supply chain (SC) management. The responsibility of producers to extend and reverse SCs is a critical and timely topic that captures increasing concerns over the way firms can adapt their business models to interlinking technical, socio‐economic and environmental frameworks. This is particularly true when producers are not also reuse/recycle actors. By performing a critical review of the scientific literature on this field, this article develops nine elemental factors that can be considered for assessing the impacts of collaborative strategies as a means to implement extended producer responsibility (EPR) in open‐loop SCs. The resulting conceptual framework provides EPR implementation guidance under different market conditions. Inter‐organizational relationships are found to present both opportunities and threats that can be profitably managed under a systemic perspective. Implications for management and needs for further research are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Green supply chain practices and company performance in Portuguese manufacturing sector

Green supply chain management is an important organizational approach to reducing strain on the environment. Many companies are under pressure from customers, media, governments, and investors, among others, to implement green practices. This exploratory paper investigates the relationships between internal and external green practices of eight Portuguese companies from different industrial sectors and their impact on economic and environmental performance. The relationship was analyzed based on the data collected from 22 semi‐structured interviews with general managers, procurement and environmental/safety managers, and through secondary data collected from reports, websites and companies' internal documentation. The analysis identifies the most important green practices considered by managers, as well as the performance measures that are most appropriate and most widely used to evaluate the influence of green practices on corporate performance. A conceptual model was derived to assess the influence of green practices on focal company economic and environmental performance. The results support four of five propositions of this research, and it is possible to conclude that the companies believe that with the adoption of green supply chain practices, they can be more competitive in the market. Due to the scope of the green practices, the relationship between green practices and economic performance was inconclusive. Internal and external green supply chain practices contribute to improved environmental performance because for all companies, there is a positive relationship between green practices and environmental performance in terms of energy, water consumption, waste, and air emissions reduction.     

Do firm characteristics affect environmental sustainability? A literature review-based assessment

Combating environmental pollution and climate change mandates strong commitment and participation of all firms across sectors. However, the environmental conduct of firms is seen to vary as per their characteristics, especially their size, ownership, and age. Current understanding of these characteristics' influence on environmental sustainability is limited, fragmented, and scattered across the literature, which this study seeks to improve and contribute to. Based on a rigorous screening of the last 25 years' literature (1996–2020), the study develops a comprehensive understanding of firm characteristics' implications for environmental sustainability, namely, environmental practices implementation, environmental drivers, environmental barriers, and associated (environmental, cost/economic, operational, and organizational) performance implications. Several meaningful and generalizable trends, conflicts, and consensus, or lack thereof, are revealed. For instance, the extent of environmental practices' implementation can be seen to be greater at large firms' (vis-à-vis small ones) and at foreign firms' (vis-à-vis local ones), though not much difference is seen between old and new firms. Also, several metafactors such as resources availability, innovation propensity, and bureaucracy and organizational inertia are identified that explain the differential influence of firm characteristics on environmental sustainability and dispel erroneous stereotypes. Finally, gaps in the literature offering avenues for future research are highlighted along with implications for research, theory, and practice. Results are expected to help policymakers and practitioners develop policies/interventions that ensure all firms, irrespective of their characteristics contribute to environmental sustainability. A comprehensive review of this kind has not been previously undertaken and constitutes the novelty of this work.     

Circular economy,the transition of an incumbent focal firm: How to successfully reconcile environmental and economic sustainability?

Circular economy (CE) has garnered increasing attention in political circles and practitioner literature thanks to its potential to overcome the harmful consequences of linear patterns of growth. Nonetheless, the adoption of sustainable practices entails a holistic approach requiring businesses to make significant changes to their production, technologies and stakeholder management. These challenges resulted in limited progress in terms of the practical implementation of CE. This paper addresses the need for more literature focused on the pragmatic aspects of applying this paradigm to incumbent firms. The author presents the journey that Lucart S.p.A., a major European tissue paper manufacturer, has undertaken between 2014 and 2020 to apply CE principles to its practices. Insights from the transformation process, reconstructed through interviews with the firm's management and environmental impact data, suggest that to succeed it takes innovating (plants, products and marketing strategies) and setting up supply chains that reconcile environmental and economic sustainability.     

Business Strategy and Firm Reorganization: Role of Changing Environmental Standards,Sustainable Business Initiatives and Global Market Conditions

My study is framed against the backdrop of increasingly stringent environmental demands on the pulp and paper industry to reduce water and air pollution, and the changing global market conditions. I first present an observation‐based analysis conducted by visiting selected paper mills in Finland, the US, Germany and Sweden. Interesting differences and similarities emerge. Some of the observed differences lie in their focus on achieving incremental efficiency gains from better management of production processes, inventories, supply‐chain, product distribution and timing of modernization investments such as information technology. In the second part of the paper I present evidence on firms' productivity paths and the heterogeneity in productivity among relatively similar firms, and selected evidence of firms' investments in specific areas and how these affected productivity. My findings have implications for organizational behavior and business strategies employed by firms to improve their performance and productivity under changing environmental standards and market conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Board gender diversity and environmental,social, and economic value creation: Does family ownership matter?

Prior literature on firm value creation for stakeholders has oversimplified and narrowed the concept of value down to “economic returns.” Although economic returns are fundamental to a firm's core stakeholders (i.e., shareholders), other legitimate stakeholders want “value” beyond economic returns. We define stakeholder value as the financial and nonfinancial returns a firm can offer to its legitimate stakeholders, and empirically investigate whether board gender diversity (BGD) improves our multidimensional measure of value. Using Thomson Reuters' ASSET4 data for U.K.‐listed firms available from Eikon for the period 2007–2017, we report a significant positive relationship between BGD and stakeholder value creation. In particular, BGD increases social and environmental value creation in addition to economic returns. Furthermore, our results suggest that even though gender‐diverse boards are associated with stakeholder value creation in family firms, this is only conspicuous for environmental value creation. The findings suggest that although female directors cater to the interests of broader stakeholder groups, family ownership causes them to mainly focus on environmental stakeholders. The study provides important implications for regulators, stakeholders, and academic scholars.     

Answering key questions on green consumption: A qualitative study among Indian youth

The main objectives of this study are to (a) comprehend the definition of green consumption, (b) identify the products that are considered green by consumers, (c) understand the reasons behind green product consumption, and (d) decipher the possible implications of consuming green. To achieve these objectives, information‐rich young consumers were depth interviewed. Subsequently, thematic maps were developed using thematic analysis technique. In that, three major themes emerged as (a) personal factors, (b) social factors, and (c) environmental factors. These findings have implications primarily for scholars as this paper advances prior literature on the theory of planned behavior by looking at green consumption through the lens of young Indians. Also, it has implications for marketers as they may formulate strategies to market their green products on the basis of the factors identified in the paper.     

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     

Environmental sustainability engagement of firms: The roles of social capital,resources, and managerial entrepreneurial orientation of small and medium enterprises in Vietnam

How firms in transition economies demonstrate their strategic engagement in sustainable environmental management given their limited resources and capabilities is less understood in the literature. This study explores how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam, an exemplar of a country in transition from a closed and socialist economy to an open and liberal market, draw on their external social capital to access critical resources that are leveraged by the entrepreneurial orientation or capabilities of the firms' top management towards engagement in business-wide environmentally sustainable practices. Drawing on a database of more than 2000 firms from a large-scale survey of firms in Vietnam, this study tests the relationships between two facets of social capital, environmental management resources and environmental sustainability engagement. This study further contends that managerial entrepreneurial orientation moderates by enhancing the strategic utilisation of resources to enable firms in Vietnam to engage in environmental sustainability. The results offer novel theoretical insights and timely managerial or practical implications as well as promising directions for future research on the resources, strategies and capabilities of firms in transition economies.