Aspirational Presentation: Do Aspirational Talks Always Induce Environmentally Responsible Actions?

Abstract

When executives are put into the situation that they feel held accountable to make effort towards what they presented about environmental topics, in what way do they put their communication into action? To answer this question, we combine a behavioral theory of the firm and communicative constitution of organizations and apply them to executive presentations made for their institutional investors and analysts. Using 800 conference presentation transcripts from 88 sampled firms in the polluting industries, we found that aspirational presentations were linked with capability-enhancing environmental actions while they did not affect legitimacy-seeking ones. This study will contribute to a behavioral theory of the firm by exploring the aspiration of unobtrusive and difficult-to-measure performance.