How to Promote Medium-Sized Farms to Adopt Environmental Strategy to Achieve Sustainable Production during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Stanley Y B Huang,Kuei-Hsien Chen,Yue-Shi Lee

doi:10.3390/agriculture11111052

Stanley Y B Huang, Kuei-Hsien Chen + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11111052

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Abstract

To achieve sustainable production in medium-sized farms, this research proposes a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to predict environmental strategy (ES), which is a crucial source of sustainable production. Based on the theory of upper echelons, the present research puts forward that the environmental leadership (EL) of the chief executive officer (CEO) at phase one affects the development of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) adoption, which in turn affects the development of ES adoption over time. The empirical data were obtained through a three-stage sampling method of 90 CEOs and 270 members of senior management teams (SETs) of Taiwanese medium-sized farms, over a period of six months. The research results support that the higher level of CEO EL at phase one results in the development of ECSR adoption, which in turn results in the development of ES adoption. This research opens a new direction for sustainable production by showing how to implement ES through organizational management mechanisms (EL). These findings can fill the gaps in the literature on the sustainable production of farms and can also help these farms to achieve sustainable production by adopting ES.

Highlights

The upper echelons theory believes that the features or values of senior managers should significantly influence the company’s strategic choice [8], and leadership is an important feature of chief executive officer (CEO) [11], indicating the relationship between environmental leadership (EL) and
The hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) of the present survey describes that the organization-level and the individualThe HLM of the present survey describes that the organization-level and the individlevel EL results in further development at the organization-level and individual-level environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR), ual-level EL results in further development at the organization-level and individual-level while more developments in the organization-level and individual-level ECSR will lead to ECSR, while more developments in the organization-level and individual-level ECSR will more developments in environmental strategy (ES) over time (Figure 1)
Since the data structure of this research is nested in multiple farms, we adopt the HLM [15] for analyzing multilevel framework

Summary

Introduction

ES is defined as the extent to which a company adds environmental issues to its development plan to reduce pollution caused by production activities [7]. According to the theory of the upper echelons [8], this research adopts a novel model to predict the ES, that is, the environmental leadership (EL), of chief executive officers (CEOs), used as a driver of ES by the medium effect of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR). ECSR means the company’s responsible policy toward the welfare of multiple stakeholders [10]. The upper echelons theory believes that the features or values of senior managers should significantly influence the company’s strategic choice [8], and leadership is an important feature of CEOs [11], indicating the relationship between EL and ECSR adoption

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Discussion

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