Organisational mechanisms in environmental management: an evolutionary analysis confronted with empirical facts (original) (raw)
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2009
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Human Resource Management, 2017
This study applies evolutionary economics reasoning to the green HRM context and examines whether and how environmental management routinization relates to organizational performance. In doing so, we introduce the concept of ecological routines, defined as deeply embedded, firm-specific rules and procedures associated with organizing and practicing corporate environmental management that do not change very much from one iteration, period, or functional unit to another. We examine the extent to which ecological routines that encompass organizing (high-performance organizing [HPO]) and practice routines of environmental sustainability relate to green decisions, green behaviors, and organizational performance. In a sample of 229 managers from 33 organizations in the environment-sensitive industries of the United States, we find support for multilevel mediation of green decisions and green behaviors as well as interaction of HPO and environmental management practice routines. Implications for research and practice are discussed. K E Y W O R D S ecological routines, environmental management, green behaviors, green decisions, highperformance organizing 1 | INTRODUCTION Growing global concern about the long-term consequences of environmental degradation and climate change as well as the threats that these pose to economic growth and firm performance has driven companies to proactively strive toward improved environmental
Factors That Motivate Developments in Environmental Management: An Approach to Institutional Theory
Pollution is the main cause of high environmental impacts, causing damages to society, fauna and vegetation as it degrades and jeopardizes the environment. In addition, it is fundamental to consider the use and wasting of natural resources deriving from goods production which is aimed at expanding itself as it seeks to increase markets, therefore increasing the consumption of goods. Industrial organizations are seen as the main culprits for contributing to and worsening these problems. However, as social and environmental variables are being included in the management of corporate activities, special practices are found to be adopted in order to prevent pollution, increase efficiency and decrease the use of natural resources. The main purpose of this research was to study industrial companies in the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul for the factors that contribute the most to develop forward-oriented programs in order to promote changes that tend to an evolution in management, or to determine if these companies are only focusing on isolated measures as a response to legal pressure. The investigation was conducted using a survey and, later, Factor Analysis through Principal Components in order to find the most relevant variables; then, Multiple Linear Regression was used as a means to determine the evolution of environmental management, its major driving factors and the perception of managers regarding pressures faced, according to the principles of Institutional Theory. We were able to find that companies have evolved in a positive way with regard to understanding environment in management activities in the last few years. Moreover, coercive pressure is a relevant factor for companies both in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. However, the environment is still not treated in a structured, systematic way by these companies.
1998
The DynEmics Research Program is a collaborative effort by four University research groups to study the changes taking place in environmental management in Dutch businesses. The companies included in the study make up the program's business panel. The four studies focus on: the dynamics of the integration of environmental management in company strategy; the response of marketing functions to environmental pressures and innovations; the influence of stakeholder networks on business responses to environmental issues; the interaction between businesses and environmental authorities. The program involves the development of a meta-theoretical perspective based on organizational learning and change (OLC).
Journal of Knowledge Management, 2018
Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate how an environmental management system (EMS) might affect the environmental product innovation propensity of a firm through its influence on two factors shaping the knowledge process: the human capital management practices of training and development and the organisational context. Design/methodology/approach To test the study’s hypotheses, an empirical analysis was carried out on 262 companies drawn from 16 developed European markets included in the S&P Europe 350 Dow Jones index over the years 2005-2015.The authors adopted regression analysis by using the ordinary least squares and the binary logit econometric models. Findings Consistently with the study’s predictions, results show that for organisational contexts characterised by the presence of family owners, the EMAS-certified EMS reveals as a significant moderating factor that positively influences their approach to the knowledge management tools for the improvement of the wo...
Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2012
This paper integrates two conceptual frameworks, utility maximization and institutional theory, to analyze voluntary corporate environmental management. The utility maximization or economic approach centers on motivations to decrease cost, increase revenue and improve manager utility. Institutional theory emphasizes how external pressures from market and non-market constituents shape the firm's environmental efforts. We view the two frameworks as complementary and postulate a model that includes both types of influences. Survey data from six major industries consisting of a diverse set of facilities are used to estimate the effects of economic and institutional factors on a facility's use of environmental practices and pollutionprevention activities. Our results support the hypothesized model, and show that cost barriers, management attitudes toward environmental stewardship, company ownership and external institutional forces, including competitiveness, investor and regulatory pressures, all affect a facility's environmental practices and pollution prevention activities. Findings suggest that a multifaceted policy strategy is needed to advance corporate environmental management across diverse firms.
Law & Policy, 2008
Voluntary programs intended to improve corporate environmental practices have proliferated in recent years. Why some businesses choose to participate in such voluntary programs, while others do not, remains an open question. Recent work suggests that companies' environmental practices, including their decisions to participate in voluntary programs, are shaped by a license to operate comprised of social, regulatory, and economic pressures. Although these external factors do matter, by themselves they only partially explain business decision making, since facilities subject to similar external factors often behave differently. In this article, we draw from organizational theory to explain why we would expect a company's license to operate to be ultimately constructed by internal factors, such as managerial incentives, organizational culture, and organizational identity, as these shape both interpretations of the external pressures and organizational responses to them. Using qualitative data from an exploratory study of matched facilities that reached different decisions about participating in a prominent voluntary environmental program, we then report evidence indicative of the role of these internal factors in shaping facilities' environmental decisions. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that could further develop understanding of how internal organizational characteristics influence environmental management decisions, including those concerning participation in voluntary programs. Constructing the License to Operate: Internal Factors and their Influence on Corporate Environmental Decisions What determines the environmental practices of individual companies and facilities? In particular, what leads some businesses to take actions that go beyond compliance with environmental regulation? Despite more than two decades of research devoted to these questions, scholars "still know little about why individual corporations behave the way they do in the environmental context, about why some companies, but not others, choose to move beyond compliance, or what motivates them to do so" (Gunningham et al. 2003: 135). Firms' environmental practices are generally thought to result from a constellation of factors including regulatory requirements, competitive and economic pressures, evolving social demands and institutional norms, and technological innovation and adoption (Porter & van der
The limits and possibilities in designing the environmentally sustainable firm
Business Strategy and the Environment, 1994
In the mid-1 980s national and international pressures re-emerged on organisations to take responsibility for the environmental externalities created by industrial activities. With the Brundtland Report (1 987) strong support for the 'principle of sustainable development in the protection of the natural environment emerged. This instigated organisations to engage in the development of environmental policies, incorporation of environmental strategies in product development, assessment of environmental impact of products and production activities, and increased green advertising. In spite of promising industrial environmental activities, a recent Swedish study (Arnfalk and Thidell, 1992) shows that the dominant force for environmental efforts remains legislationor threats thereofrather than integration of environmental criteria in designing and developing product-and production systems. To understand the limited response to environmental challenges we explored the sources of inertia in relation to environmental change activities in industrial networks (i) theoretically through a review of interorganisational literature on industrial networks and change, and institutional approaches to organisation; and (ii) empirically through some insights from three case studies of the mobilisation and coordination activities in industrial networks involved in substituting the use of Chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, in refrigerators, and in the production processes of flexible foam and circuit boards. The theoretical review suggests that organisations are embedded in dependency relationships with other organisations that will restrict the material resources and social relations any given actor has to i t s relevant environment and, hence, influence possible actions and outcomes of environmental change. Product, production, and administrative systems are highly coordinated and adapted to each other which places considerable limitations on the willingness and ability of network actors and systems, to change. The empirical studies show interdependencies and inertia in the technological as well as the relational systems. Evidence of the internalising of environmental problems into individual or network behaviour was not found. Instead, when forced to change, actors cooperated to find solutions within estabtished relationships that did not alter existing products and production systems. On the firm and network levels of observation the pattern of response that emerged during the change processes was the diffusion of solutions, not by strategic design, but through overlapping and interlocked network relations, i.e., through processes of institutionalisation. Our study suggests that the reorientation processes towards environmental sustainability in a firm can best be understood in the context of structures and processes on the network rather than on the organisational level.