Corporate Environmental Behavior Research Articles

Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses Go Beyond Compliance

This article examines the concept of the corporate “social license,” which governs the extent to which a corporation is constrained to meet societal expectations and avoid activities that societies (or influential elements within them) deem unacceptable, whether or not those expectations are embodied in law. It examines the social license empirically, as it relates to one social problem–environmental protection–and as it relates to one particular industry: pulp and paper manufacturing. It shows try the social license is important, the circumstances in which it may encourage companies to go “beyond compliance” with regulation, how its terms are monitored and enforced, and how it interacts with what we term the regulatory and economic licenses. Overall, this research demonstrates that corporate environmental behavior cannot be explained purely in terms of instrumental threats and moral obligations to comply with the law, and that the increasing incidence of “beyond compliance” corporate behavior can be better explained in terms of the interplay between social pressures and economic constraints.

Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses Go Beyond Compliance

This article examines the concept of the corporate “social license,” which governs the extent to which a corporation is constrained to meet societal expectations and avoid activities that societies (or influential elements within them) deem unacceptable, whether or not those expectations are embodied in law. It examines the social license empirically, as it relates to one social problem–environmental protection–and as it relates to one particular industry: pulp and paper manufacturing. It shows try the social license is important, the circumstances in which it may encourage companies to go “beyond compliance” with regulation, how its terms are monitored and enforced, and how it interacts with what we term the regulatory and economic licenses. Overall, this research demonstrates that corporate environmental behavior cannot be explained purely in terms of instrumental threats and moral obligations to comply with the law, and that the increasing incidence of “beyond compliance” corporate behavior can be better explained in terms of the interplay between social pressures and economic constraints.

The Determinants of Mining Company Response to Environmental Approvals Regulation: A Report of Australian Research

Companies react in different ways to environmental regulation. A prevailing view in the literature suggests that external factors, particularly stakeholder groups, exert the most influence on the environmental responses of firms. This paper reports on research that examines the influence of a range of possible determinants, both internal and external, on the way Australian mining companies respond to environmental approvals regulation. External pressures included stakeholder pressure, jurisdictional culture and market characteristics, and internal pressures included organizational culture, organizational learning, the influence of individuals within firms and company size. The study found that the internal pressures of organizational culture, organiza tional learning and the influence of individuals exert the greatest influence on mining company response to environmental approvals regulation. These results suggest that existing explanations of corporate environmental behaviour, which emphasize external factors, should be complemented by a focus on the internal dynamics of firms.

Book Reviews

This book brings together emerging perspectives from organization theory and management, environmental sociology, international regime studies, and the social studies of science and technology to provide a starting point for discipline-based studies of environmental policy and corporate environmental behavior. Reflecting the book's theoretical and empirical focus, the audience is two-fold: organizational scholars working within the institutional tradition, and environmental scholars interested in management and policy. Together this mix forms a creative synthesis for both sets of readers, analyzing how environmental policy and organizational practices are shaped, spread and contested.

Corporate environmental behaviour - a comparison between Nordic and US firms

The green challenge will be one of the key strategic issues facing businesses in the coming decades. Some argue that it is important for mankind as a whole. In this article the opinions of Nordic and US managers on environmental matters are investigated and compared. A questionnaire was sent to senior managers mainly in four industries: forest and paper, electronics, telecommunications and the printing industry. The results show that US managers perceive government laws and actions to be more stringent than Nordic managers do and the time to adapt was felt to be too short. There were no differences between the two regions in the degree of pro-activeness and environmental innovation. However US managers reported a shortage of skilled labour. Managers both in the Nordic countries and the USA considered themselves to be ahead of their competitors in environmental actions. Nordic managers were much more positive toward the competitive effects and profitability of environmental measures than their US counterparts. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Environment and investment: the role of personal investment choice in creating sustainability

Traditionally most investors have sought only financial returns from their investments. The idea of reaping environmental benefits from investment is not widely accepted, primarily because ecology and economy have long been considered mutually exclusive by financial markets. However, as social values change growing numbers of investors are beginning to identify the potential role of investment in assisting moves towards ecologically sustainable development (ESD). With a focus on the sizeable Australian investment market, examples are drawn from overseas of recent research and environmentally screened investment funds providing evidence of a positive correlation between environmental and financial performance. The implications of the deregulation of the investment market in Australia and the importance of corporate environmental reporting (CER) and other methods of communicating environmental performance to investors, both individual and institutional1, are discussed. The paper concludes that while the trade-off between ecology and economy remains within the dominant paradigm, and despite a lack of widespread CER, changes in investment patterns are occurring. As this gathers momentum, aided by more transparent corporate environmental behaviour, both environmental and financial returns can be achieved. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Extending linear approaches to mapping corporate environmental behaviour

Drawing upon the findings of an ongoing empirical study of UK corporate environmental attitude and policies, the paper seeks to extend the debate as to how company strategic environmental policy making can be plotted and described. It is argued that the positioning of companies is determined by the interaction of a set of key external and internal influences and constraints, the relationship between which often produces strategic policy positions which appear not to conform to the behavioural archetypes established by linear sequential models. This suggests that such models may not allow the full impact of the reality of business necessity to be recognized. This is seen to be increasingly true for companies operating globally, who are faced with differing environmental requirements and regulations, and who have as yet not developed global environmental performance standards. Although acknowledging existing linear work, the case is put for the recognition of further archetypes, that can distinguish behavioural characteristics and which are identified as being beyond the confines of the linear approach. The hypotheses established are exploratory in nature and are the subject of ongoing confirmatory research. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Comparing Corporate Environmental Activities in Australia and the UK

The environment continues to command serious attention as a key consideration in the corporate strategy process, both within the specialised environmental management literature and increasingly from the general management literature (Avila and Whitehead 1993, Porter and van der Linde 1993, Shrivastava 1992). One important area of academic examination is that of corporate environmental behaviour.