When Are Corporate Environmental Policies a Form of Greenwashing?

Do environmental policy statements accurately represent corporate commitment to environmental sustainability? Because companies are not required by law to publish environmental policy statements or to verify that these statements are true using independent third parties, external stakeholders often wonder when a published commitment to a policy translates into actual policy implementation. The authors analyzed two independent databases to predict the circumstances under which large, leading-edge corporations in industry sectors will commit to and/or implement proactive corporate environmental policies and when it is unlikely they will do so. The authors found that commitment to specific environmental policies does not vary greatly between industry sectors; however, policy implementation does.

[1]  P. Shimell.  Corporate environmental policy in practice , 1991 .

[2]  Ronald K. Mitchell,et al.  Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of who and What Really Counts , 1997 .

[3]  L. Preston,et al.  Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy , 1981 .

[4]  Anne T Lawrence,et al.  Leading-Edge Environmental Management: Motivation, Opportunity, Resources, and Processes , 1995 .

[5]  U. Steger,et al.  The Roles of Supervisory Support Behaviors and Environmental Policy in Employee “Ecoinitiatives” at Leading-Edge European Companies. , 2000 .

[6]  Mary Lyn Stoll.  The Ethics of Marketing Good Corporate Conduct , 2002 .

[7]  Kit Sadgrove,et al.  The Green Manager's Handbook , 1992 .

[8]  Thomas J. Zenisek.  Corporate Social Responsibility: A Conceptualization Based On Organizational Literature , 1979 .

[9]  Sanjay Sharma.  Managerial Interpretations and Organizational Context as Predictors of Corporate Choice of Environmental Strategy , 2000 .

[10]  Ans Kolk,et al.  Evaluating corporate environmental reporting , 1999 .

[11]  A. Kolk.  Trends in sustainability reporting by the Fortune Global 250 , 2003 .

[12]  Frank Friedman.  Practical Guide To Environmental Management , 1988 .

[13]  Trevor Russel,et al.  Greener purchasing : opportunities and innovations , 1998 .

[14]  Linda C. Angell,et al.  Towards a Process Model of Corporate Greening , 2000 .

[15]  D. Rondinelli,et al.  Proactive corporate environmental management: A new industrial revolution , 1998 .

[16]  Ans Kolk,et al.  KPMG International Survey of Corporate Sustainability Reporting 2002 , 2002 .

[17]  Michael J. Lenox,et al.  Industry Self-Regulation Without Sanctions: The Chemical Industry's Responsible Care Program , 2000 .

[18]  W. Powell,et al.  The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields , 1983 .

[19]  R. Welford.  Corporate environmental management: systems and strategies. , 2014 .

[20]  Dianne Dumanoski,et al.  Our Stolen Future , 1996 .

[21]  Charles O. Holliday,et al.  Walking the Talk: The Business Case for Sustainable Development , 2002 .

[22]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[23]  M. Polonsky,et al.  Corporate environmental commitment in Australia: A sectorial comparison , 1992 .

[24]  S. P. Sethi,et al.  A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Analysis of Social Issues and Evaluation of Business Response Patterns , 1979 .

[25]  Geoff Brumfiel,et al.  Changing course , 2007, Nature.

[26]  Sten Jönsson.  Institutions and Organizations , 1997 .

[27]  Ruediger Kuehr,et al.  Strategic sustainable development — selection, design and synergies of applied tools , 2002 .

[28]  Perry Sadorsky,et al.  The Determinants of an Environmentally Responsive Firm: An Empirical Approach , 1996 .

[29]  J. E. Morhardt,et al.  Scoring corporate environmental and sustainability reports using GRI 2000, ISO 14031 and other criteria , 2002 .

[30]  John W Graham,et al.  Corporate Environmental Policies , 1999 .

[31]  Teresa M. Shaft,et al.  A Model of the Global and Institutional Antecedents of High-Level Corporate Environmental Performance , 2004 .

[32]  Kendall Roth,et al.  Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness , 2000 .

[33]  Joseph Sarkis,et al.  Greener manufacturing and operations : from design to delivery and back /ed. by Joseph Sarkis , 2002 .

[34]  F. Reinhardt.  Bringing the environment down to earth. , 1999, Harvard business review.

[35]  Ans Kolk,et al.  Environmental reporting by the Fortune Global 250: exploring the influence of nationality and sector , 2001 .

[36]  Jennifer Nash,et al.  Industry codes as agents of change: responsible care adoption by US chemical companies , 1999 .

[37]  J. Logsdon,et al.  Organizational responses to environmental issues : oil refining companies and air pollution , 1983 .

[38]  Strategy for a future Chemicals Policy , 2001 .

[39]  Forest L. Reinhardt,et al.  Market Failure and the Environmental Policies of Firms: Economic Rationales for “Beyond Compliance” Behavior , 1999 .

[40]  Lois Kaufman.  Selling green: What managers and marketers need to know about consumer environmental attitudes , 1999 .

[41]  C. A. Ramus.  Encouraging innovative environmental actions: what companies and managers must do , 2002 .

[42]  Forest L. Reinhardt,et al.  Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management , 2000 .

[43]  C. A. Ramus.  Organizational Support for Employees: Encouraging Creative Ideas for Environmental Sustainability , 2001 .

[44]  Pamela S. Tolbert,et al.  Institutional Sources of Change in the Formal Structure of Organizations: The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform, 1880-1935 , 1983 .

[45]  Philip L. Cochran,et al.  The Evolution of the Corporate Social Performance Model , 1985 .

[46]  T. Ketola.  The seven sisters: Snow whites, dwarfs or evil queens? A comparison of the official environmental policies of the largest oil corporations in the world , 1993 .

[47]  The Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropic Venturesl , 2001 .