Explaining Shades of Green: Why Do Companies Act Differently on Similar Environmental Issues?

Abstract

Regulations governing corporate environmental practice have undoubtedly become more stringent over the past several decades, and companies' environmental performance records have, on balance, improved markedly as well. But substantial variation remains in how companies act on issues of environmental protection. Within any industry, leading companies gamer praise from regulators for voluntary initiatives and creative approaches, while laggards gamer penalties for failure to comply with permits. Even within a single firm, different facilities perform differently, and within a single facility, some environmental actions may be exemplary while others are remedial (Prakash 2000; Howard-Grenville 2000). Yet scholarship on corporate environmental management has largely ignored these facts. Concerned with advancing arguments for how corporations ought to act on environmental issues (Roome 1992; Gladwin, Kennelly, and Krauss 1995; Shrivastava 1995),' much early work failed to adequately account for how they do act. Shades of Green is one of the rare books grounded in the messy facts of corporate environmental practice. Not all companies are capable of being environmental leaders, nor do they aspire to be. Not all corporate environmental Jennifer A. Howard-Grenville is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Boston University School of Management. 1 thank Andy Hoffman for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay. 1. These works argue for the paradigmatic shift of corporate management toward more "ecocentric" thinking and action, while others (e.g., Porter and van der Linde 1995) make the same argument from the perspective of competitive corporate strategy.

ISO 14001 as an Environmental Capacity Building Tool — Variations among Nations

“…Such is achieved through communication and sharing information with the relevant actors (20,21). Similar to the function of "complementary voluntary environmental agreements" in environmentally competent nations (10), influencing the LO does not mean reducing its environmental requirements.…”

“…Similar to the function of "complementary voluntary environmental agreements" in environmentally competent nations (10), influencing the LO does not mean reducing its environmental requirements. It generally means providing more flexibility to the corporation in achieving demanding environmental outcomes (21).…”

“…Gunningham et al, as well as, Howard-Grenville found that laws that require publication of information help strengthen the social LO stringency that, in turn, affect firms' behavior (20,21). However, in general, such a regulatory information framework is absent in Israel.…”

Nothing New in the (North) East? Interpreting the Rhetoric and Reality of Japanese Corporate Governance

“…In other words, we must examine more closely "patterns of policy reform", as well as "patterns of corporate adjustment" {Vogel 2005: 153-62}. We can draw also on a rich theoretical and empirical literature combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis to show how firms in Japan and elsewhere not only respond to regulatory environments, but also attempt to reshape them -without necessarily "capturing" them, as predicted by public choice theory ({Gunningham et al 2003};{Howard-Grenville 2005}). Studies along these lines, focusing on processes and more complex feedback loops, seem likely to demonstrate significant transformations in Japanese corporate and public governance, and perhaps explain better the modes of change and considerable diversity of outcomes currently in Japan.…”

Inclusive business : Constructing a model and an indicator for food and agribusiness multinational enterprises for smallholder inclusion in high value-adding supply chains

“…This implies that corporate sustainability is conceived as a viable business case (economic), a natural case (environmental), and a social case (social dimension) (e.g., Dyllick and Hockerts 2002;Carroll and Shabana 2010). In the past decades, the CSR-strategy of firms shifted from expressing corporate philanthropy -and obtaining a 'social license to operate' (e.g., Gunningham et al 2004;Howard-Grenville 2005;Kolk and Tulder 2010) -to a (sustainable) business case approach (Kurucz et al 2008;Carroll and Shabana 2010;Schaltegger et al 2012). In that line of reasoning, sustainable sourcing strategies and practices, traditionally studied via Transaction Cost Economics (TCE, Williamson 1979 and1981), need a new angle of study.…”