Organizational Learning, Social Ties, and Environmental Strategies: A Resource Dependence Perspective

Abstract

Anchored to resource dependence theory, our study focuses on organizational learning (both exploitative and explorative) and social ties (both political and business) and investigates how they independently and interactively affect the adoption of environmental strategies. Using a dataset of 272 Chinese firms, we find that firms that engage in exploitative learning tend to adopt mandatory rather than voluntary environmental strategies, whereas firms with explorative learning are more likely to adopt voluntary as opposed to mandatory environmental strategies. Furthermore, firms that involve in exploitative learning benefit to a greater extent from political ties than from business ties as a means of adopting mandatory environmental strategies, whereas firms that engage in explorative learning benefit to a greater extent from business ties than from political ties to adopt voluntary environmental strategies. Overall, our study offers novel insights into the environmental management literature by clarifying the underlying mechanisms through which firms adopt distinct environmental strategies.