External regulatory and normative pressures from both the Chinese central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) program and public participation can act together to influence corporate environmental governance behavior. This research uses the multiperiod Difference-In-Differences method to test the compound impact of CEPI and public participation on corporate environmental governance strategies and investigate the underlying influence mechanisms. The results show that CEPI and public participation have a positive compound effect on the corporate “source-control” strategy. A reasonable reduction in pollution charges and increased (...) environmental subsidies are essential to stimulate the green innovation potential of heavily polluting firms. Our research helps clarify the game relationship between the central and the local governments and analyzes how the relationship between the government, the public, and corporates affects environmental governance, thereby advancing principal-agent theory and expanding the current research on institutional pressures and corporate environmental governance. (shrink)

This research investigates managerial value orientations using the Rokeach Value Survey to assess the importance managers assign to various values. While prior work and select organizational theory posit that MVO will not change over time, the data are analyzed to determine if the MVO of mid- to upper-level managers, the key decision-makers in most organizations, has remained generally the same or has changed from one generation to another. The results show that the MVO of managers from 1990 is significantly different (...) than the MVO of managers today. The greatest difference lies in the MVO area of competence versus moral values, with more managers emphasizing a moral value orientation than previously. Therefore, the data indicate there is a noticeable shift in MVO over the past 20+ years. The implications of the results reported are discussed, along with suggestions for future managerial values research. (shrink)

This article embarks on ethical trade-offs at the sustainability/finance interface by contrasting shareholders’ interest in short-term financial returns with society’s interest in counteracting ecological and social grievances. Scrutinizing share repurchases, we investigate a firm’s communicated sustainability orientation (i.e., its environmental and social value orientation) as well as its environmental and social sustainability performance. Our results are based on a large-scale panel dataset of 491 U.S. firms observed from 2004 to 2016. The dataset combines share buyback data with sustainability orientation scores (...) from shareholder letters and sustainability performance ratings. The econometric models suggest no association between social value orientation and repurchase volumes, but a significantly negative relationship between environmental value orientation and buybacks in a cubic form. Executive stock options partially attenuate this relationship. Share repurchases in turn negatively affect future environmental and social performance. This study grasps the consequences of firms’ short-term shareholder satisfaction and discusses its ethical implications in the context of firms’ contribution to sustainable development, thereby providing important insights to the business ethics discourse. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism and (...) relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

How impartial are managerial decisions? This question is particularly concerning when it comes to making green investment decisions in the face of stakeholder pressures. When managers respond to stakeholder pressures, their personal cognition, judgment, and past experiences play a role in determining their responses. The salience of particular stakeholder claims may be determined by deeply rooted individual preferences. This research investigates how a manager’s past experiences can influence green investments. Data are gathered from 247 managers about their past experience and (...) their employer’s performance data. These data are combined with managerial responses to a vignette-based experiment, which required managers to make green investments based on a decision scenario where they are exposed to different types and strength of stakeholder pressure. Results suggest that managers’ years of experience, their employers’ financial performance, and their employers’ market performance influence investment decisions even when making decisions under new and different set of circumstances. While the employers’ financial performance influences managers to invest more, the employers’ market performance only influences managers’ investment in the presence of either high consumer or high community pressure. Compared to less-experienced managers, experienced managers invest more in response to consumer pressure but less in response to community pressure. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings in green management are explored. (shrink)

We examine the important roles of two forms of capital—human and social—in the accumulation of critical resources that enable firms to adopt sound environmental management practices which contribute to better firm performance. Drawing on human and social capital theories and the resource-based view of the firm, we tested this proposition using data from a survey of 141 small manufacturing firms drawn from a survey of business enterprises in a metropolitan city in the southern region of the Philippines. The results of (...) our analysis using structural equation modelling-partial least square approach show that both human capital such as age, experience and education of managers of the firm and social capital such as external managerial ties and networks have significant and positive contribution to the environmental management resources of firms although the effects vary in magnitude. The accumulation of environmental management resources not only is positively linked to the adoption by firms of pro-environment practices but also fully mediates the effects of the two types of capital on the adoption of such practices. Pro-environment practices are positively linked to better performance outcomes. The findings underscore the need to account for the intangible and more tacit forms of capital such as managerial talent, knowledge, skills and social ties and networks in the wider debate on how small manufacturing firms in developing countries can address the pressing need to integrate environmental sustainability in business. (shrink)

Through a qualitative approach, we explore the perspective of 72 CEOs of companies operating in Portugal about the definition of corporate sustainability and its facilitators, and obtain four main findings. First, most CEOs equate CS with the company’s continuity/viability. Second, the relevance ascribed to different stakeholders differs considerably: while more than 50 % of CEOs cited shareholders/profits, and more than 40 % mentioned the natural environment and employees, very few mentioned customers, society, suppliers, the State, or competitors. Third, the management (...) practices considered as most important to develop CS are the organization’s strategic alignment with a long-term orientation, and developing and energizing people within a positive organizational climate characterized by trust and ethics. Fourth, the leadership characteristics and behaviors considered as most important to foster CS are scrutinizing the future and leading people through a mobilizing vision; energizing and developing employees; and leading by example. While the whole picture is largely consistent with the “sustainable strategic management” approach suggested by Stead and Stead and with recent CS integrative approaches, the great majority of CEOs who participate in the study have not embraced such integrative and coevolutive perspectives. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how sense of time and sense of place shape the development of organizational sustainability frames (OSFs). Time and place are fundamental cultural assumptions that influence the way organizations form these frames. Given that globalization and digitalization have fundamentally altered how organizations experience and value time and place, we develop a typology of OSF development and theorize how an organization’s sense of time and sense of place interact to shape the content and structure of OSFs. In (...) so doing, we offer a spatiotemporal perspective to the sustainability literature by bringing together previously disconnected research streams on time and place. We also highlight the importance of understanding the origins, not just the outcomes, of OSFs. (shrink)

Although there is a significant amount of research on organizational citizenship behavior and its importance to individual and organizational outcomes, relatively little research has explored the process by which such behavior emerges and is established within an organization. Against this backdrop, we combine the perspectives offered by contextualist inquiry and actor–network theory to propose an integrative framework for investigating how organizational citizenship behavior develops in a large, heterogeneous organization. In order to illustrate the framework, we present a detailed case study (...) of recycling at a large university. Like many other organizations, the university does not have a formal organizational structure to address sustainability concerns and the initiatives are therefore mainly voluntary and emerging in nature, and outcomes are, as a consequence, highly uncertain, and fragile. We argue that contextualist inquiry in combination with actor–network theory provides new and important insights into the emergence and establishment of organizational citizenship behaviors, and that outcomes are contingent upon interactions between the context, process, and content of the behaviors in question and the related networks of human and non-human actors. (shrink)

This study analyzes the logic behind the development of environmental responsiveness in companies that are located in geographical clusters. Drawing on previous research, we contend that competitiveness and legitimation are important sources of variation in these companies’ environmental responses. In particular, the companies’ perceived rivalry, competition tracking capabilities, interaction with industry associations and network embeddedness influence their competitiveness and legitimation motivations for environmental responsiveness. We used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses on a sample of 251-clustered agricultural firms in (...) Spain. The results support the hypotheses and provide a number of insights about the underlying motivations behind going green in geographical clusters. (shrink)

While it is well known that SME owner–managers’ sustainability values and attitudes impact their company’s sustainability activities, they often face profit-driven institutional orders. In a qualitative study, we investigate which identities are critical for their engagement in sustainability and how these identities interrelate with their institutional environment. We applied a qualitative design with narratives from 29 owner–managers of hospitality businesses who belong to a New Zealand-based sustainability network. Our study revealed no single overarching sustainability identity; instead, six identities could be (...) identified as sustainability-related and be linked to different institutional orders. By analyzing the interplay between the identities and the institutional environment, we also found mechanisms on how SME owner–managers impact on their business’ sustainability. We revealed that an adequate institutional environment can foster the development of sustainability-related identities, which in turn can lead to cultural evolution towards more sustainability. By integrating identity theory with organizational institutionalism, we contribute to theoretical development and to further sustainability research at individual and institutional level. (shrink)

Based on a survey and content analysis of 462 peer-reviewed academic articles over the period 1990–2014, this article reviews theories related to the external drivers of corporate social responsibility and the internal drivers of CSR that have been utilized to explain CSR. The article discusses the main tenets of the principal theoretical perspectives and their application in CSR research. Going beyond previous reviews that have largely failed to investigate theory applications in CSR scholarship, this article stresses the importance of theory-driven (...) explanations of CSR and the complementarity of different theories. The article demonstrates that the current mainstream theorizing of CSR is dominated by theories related to the external drivers of CSR and is less developed with regard to the internal dynamics. The article outlines several productive avenues for future research: the need for multi-theory studies and more research at multiple levels of analysis, particularly at the individual level of analysis. It suggests that CSR scholarship can benefit from combining theoretical insights from a range of established theoretical lenses such as institutional theory and RBV, and can gain new insights from theoretical lenses such as Austrian economics and micro-level psychological theories. (shrink)

This study utilizes hierarchical regression analysis to explore how environmental management systems influence financial performance through customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and the moderating effects of switching cost. The originality of the present research is to unpack the “black box” through which a firm can profit from EMSs. The empirical results indicate that EMSs have positive and significant impacts on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and financial performance. In addition, switching cost negatively and significantly moderates the relationship between EMSs and customer (...) satisfaction, but does not significantly moderates the relationship between EMSs and customer loyalty. The results also demonstrate that customer satisfaction and customer loyalty partially mediate the relationship between EMSs and financial performance. Our findings highlight that customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and switching cost play important roles for a firm to profit from EMSs. (shrink)

This article investigates the moderating effects of organizational social consciousness on the natural environmental competency and innovativeness relationship. Organizational social consciousness reflects the organization’s awareness of its place and contribution to the larger system in which it exists and is developed through an organization’s social responsibility, ethics, culture, corporate values, and the view of its stakeholders. Through our study of key strategic decision makers from organizations located in the USA, we operationalize organizational social consciousness and demonstrate the efficacy of this (...) construct in relation to the organizational-level constructs of environmental management competency and innovativeness. Our results reveal that organizational social consciousness positively strengthens the natural environmental competency to organizational innovativeness relationship. (shrink)

We investigate if private family firms have a greater environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms, and if this relationship is moderated by the strength of the firms’ social embeddedness. We empirically test these issues using a representative sample of 1452 private Australian small and medium-sized enterprises. Contrary to prevailing assumptions and previous indicative findings in the public firm context, our results show that family firms have a lower environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms. However, in cases where the firm is (...) highly embedded in the social community, we find that family firms have a higher environmental performance focus. We explain our unexpected results by considering the role of financial risk in publicly held family firms. Accordingly, we posit that prior findings in the public firm context may be evidence of families expropriating wealth from nonfamily shareholders rather than altruistic pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

Drawing from research on strategic choice, this study investigates the relationship between market turbulence and firms’ sustainable behavior, in the context of sustainability-related institutional adversity. It argues that the relationship between market turbulence and sustainability is mediated by network embeddedness, and this mediating role in turn is moderated by a firm’s innovative orientation. Data collected from a sample of Ontario restaurants inform predictions about firms’ propensity to adopt local wines in their portfolios, despite the limited market and normative support that (...) these wines receive compared with imported wines. The study shows that market turbulence enhances sustainable firm behavior, through the development of strong network relationships. Furthermore, the mediating effect of network embeddedness is particularly salient among firms that exhibit a stronger innovative orientation. These findings reveal how and when turbulent market conditions can contribute to a firm’s sustainable behaviors in the presence of limited institutional support for such behaviors. (shrink)

While green innovation has a positive impact on firms’ performance, some established firms that initiate green innovation activities could suffer from insufficient new green knowledge and skills. Since adopting a sustainability orientation helps firms commit to the creation of superior sustainable practices, and efficiently invest resources necessary to develop appropriate new green products, leading to superior green innovation performance, sustainability orientation offers an alternative approach for diversifying green entrants to achieve green innovation success. Building on resource-based, knowledge-based, and capabilities theories, (...) this study aims to identify key factors that enable sustainability orientation of diversifying green entrants and enhance its effect on green innovation performance. As sustainability issues frequently occur upstream at the supplier level, and since supplier involvement effectively determines new product success, this study theorizes that diversifying green entrants that adopt sustainability orientation require two types of green supplier involvement to enhance the effect of sustainability orientation on green innovation performance. Green knowledge-processing capability and green R&D capability complement green supplier involvement as a knowledge source and green supplier involvement as a co-creator, respectively, to further enhance the amount of green innovation performance. Based on a longitudinal dataset of 336 diversifying green entrants, the results support all our hypotheses. Interestingly, an additional analysis suggests that when diversifying green entrants implement green supplier involvement as a co-creator, they achieve greater green innovation performance than those who implement green supplier involvement as a knowledge source. These findings provide important theoretical implications and practical guidance for established firms to pursue green innovation. (shrink)

According to social information processing theory and conservation of resource theory, we examine whether and how authoritarian-benevolent leadership influences employees’ proactive work behaviors (PWBs) and unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPBs). Study 1, a survey of 351 participants, revealed that authoritarian-benevolent leadership was positively related to LMX ambivalence, and that LMX ambivalence was negatively related to employees’ PWBs as well as UPBs. Further, the results showed that LMX ambivalence mediated the relationship between authoritarian-benevolent leadership and employees’ PWBs as well as UPBs. We (...) also found that dialectical thinking negatively moderated the effect of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on employee LMX ambivalence. Study 2, using manipulations in the form of scenarios, examined the mediating effect of LMX ambivalence linking authoritarian-benevolent leadership with employees’ PWBs and UPBs. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. (shrink)

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears to (...) be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between cooperative business relations in small businesses and environmental protection, one of the most important policies of social responsibility in manufacturing. We reviewed the literature and carried out an empirical study of 930 small manufacturing firms in Spain. Results indicate that small businesses that maintain and improve their cooperative relations through business networking with universities, competitors, suppliers and customers spend more on environmental protection. The managerial, practical, research and policy implications of the obtained research findings (...) are discussed. (shrink)

In examining how reform-leading supranational institutions respond to public criticism, this article advances current theory on their institutional accountability mechanisms and extends research on this topic by focusing on their responses to public criticism of alleged reform failures. We consider the case of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) involvement in the Greek economic crisis, as the structural adjustment reforms it imposed to stabilize the economy. We show how these controversial and, by many accounts, failed policies have profoundly impacted the well-being (...) of the recipient country by reducing social cohesion and impoverishing the most vulnerable groups. In explaining the IMF’s institutional response mechanism for fending off such criticism, we offer moral regulatory appropriation (MRA) as a processual framework and present the IMF’s organizing logic of institutional legitimation processes in four domains of action: agentic mission, reform policies, institutional policy negotiations, and moral appropriation. We argue that this enables institutions to maintain moral legitimacy despite evidence of their reforms’ policy failure and various negative consequences for their populations. The proposed framework has theoretical implications for conceptualizing the rhetorical deployment of moral legitimation to secure and defend institutional accountability. We also highlight the limitations and boundaries of such an approach by the IMF and similar reform-leading institutions. (shrink)