Evolution of corporate environmentalism, a politico‐social perspective: Concept, command and control to self‐regulatory and voluntary, and future directions

Abstract

The present research work aims at synthesizing the evolution of Environmental sustainability from the theoretical lens of politico‐social impacts on the corporate environmentalism. The phenomenon of Environmental sustainability as a formally recognized and defined concept started to appear in western discourse in the late 60s and 70s, with formal definition coming only at 80s. Meanwhile, western politics, media and activists became active in putting pressure on corporates for sustainable environmental practices. This lead to the advent of era of regulatory controls where governments in the west took the central role. With the increasing activism of civil societies and other secondary stakeholders, businesses and governments equally realized the need for self‐regulatory (normative) and increasingly voluntary focus on environmental sustainability. Recently, the shift has been to developing nations from the western countries with EU effect and Shanghai effect placing prominence of trade and geo‐politics on cross‐border effects of corporate environmentalism from developed nations on developing nations. However, as shown by the recent researches, market forces are still weak and findings at the best indicate nonexistent or meagre linkage between financial indicators and corporate environmentalism, even in developing nations the trend remains similar. This raises concern about the future politico‐social direction of corporate environmentalism, however, one thing is clear that Asian countries especially India and China will get increasing focus.