Why Companies Go green: A Model fo Ecological Responsiveness

 This study sought to identify the motivations and contextual factors inducing corporate ecological responsiveness.  The scope consisted of 53 firms in the U.K. and Japan; under closer examination, it became apparent that competitiveness, legitimation and ecological responsibility were the three main motivators.  Additionally, such motivators were heavily influenced by three contextual conditions: field cohesion, issue salience, and individual concern.

Corporate ecological responsiveness is defined by "a set of corporate initiatives aimed at mitigating a firm's impact on the natural environment." Such initiatives include but are not limited to "changes to the firm's products, processes, and policies, such as reducing energy consumption and waste generation, using ecologically sustainable resources, and implementing an environmental management system."
Methods pursued included in-depth interviews (88), participant observations (60 hours), and archival documents. The companies selected included food retailers, P&O subsidiaries, auto manufacturers, oil companies and Japanese companies--this choice made because Japan "offered a dramatically different cultural and institutional context from Britain's, and yet the firms were at similar points of industrialization."  Additionally, the U.K. and Japan experienced similar ecological issues because of their island geographies.

Study:
Interviews were conducted with environmental managers or environmental directors; in the absence of such a position, multiple senior managers were interviewed.  Interviews generally lasted between one and two hours, were tape-recorded and remained broad in scope to better address a range of motivations and guiding themes. "We started each interview by asking what the firm had done with respect to the natural environment and then asked the respondent to trace the history of each initiative he or she mentioned and to tell us why the initiative was adopted."  Additionally, as the interview progressed, the interviewer slanted questions based on the supposed driving factor.  In example, if it appeared that "her or his firm was motivated by legitimation, we asked if legitimation, ecological responsibility or competitiveness best described the firm's motivations."  Interviewees were then asked to comment on the "relevance of the contextual variables."

Participant observations consisted of observed training seminars at two firms with extensive notes--500 pages worth.  "They served to highlight some of the issues and concerns raised by organization members who were not convinced of the value of ecologically responsive initiatives."

Archival documents were derived from "published sources, a newspaper search of the Reuters and Data Star databases, company accounts, annual reports, and corporate environmental reports to provide a background for the interviews."  This research gave specific points of discussion during these interviews, such as the published decision to replace CFCs with HCFCs.  In this, interviewers were able to specifically point out decisions and actions taken and ask what motivated such behavior.  What was discovered was that companies had several motivations.

Categories of Motivation:
Competitiveness as motivation is defined as "the potential for ecological responsiveness to improve long-term profitability."  According to interviewees, such motivations included "energy and waste management, source reductions resulting in a higher output for the same inputs (process intensification), eco-labeling and green marketing, and the development of 'ecoproducts.'"  Additionally, competitiveness paid the most attention to cost-benefit analysis of these ecological responses, and often times such decisions secured "the highest returns, independent of their ecological consequences."  Thus, more decisions were made for financial gain rather than ecological stewardship; the ethical benefit was merely a by-product.

Legitimation as motivation refers to "the desire of a firm to improve the appropriateness of its actions within an established set of regulations, norms, values or beliefs."  Examples of this include "complying with legislation, establishing an environmental committee or environmental manager position to oversee a firm's ecological i,pacts and advise senior management, developing networks or committees with local community representation, conducting environmental audits, establishing an emergency response system, and aligning the firm with environmental advocates."  Hence, such motivation was not driven simply to do good, but to avoid bad publicity and "making stakeholders nice and warm and cuddly." Expectations are met rather than exceeded.

Ecological responsibility as motivation results from the 'concern that a firm has its social obligations and values."  Companies in this category act "out of a sense of obligation, responsibility or philanthrophy rather than out of self-interest."  Most companies included in such motivations were lead by one individual in a position of leadership rather who wanted to do good, unlike legislative or competitive driven companies that take groups of individuals agreeing.

Context of Motivation:
In addition to the categories of motivations, the study sought the context of motivations.  The first being issue salience, or "the extent to which a specific ecological issue has meaning for organizational constituents."  The more scientifically complex an issue, the less likely a company was to pursue it, as neither the company nor its stakeholders could proficiently grasp its meaning and importance.  "Issue salience will be positively associated with legitimation and competitiveness."

The second context for motivation is field cohesion, or "the intensity and density of formal and informal network ties between constituents in an organizational field."  Thus, certain industries and groups of companies continually influence each other's behaviors and decisions.  There is an inherent connectedness between "employees, owners, and local residents" that "increased the frequency and intensity of interactions, placing the firms operating within that field under greater scrutiny and resulting in concerns about legitimacy." Thus, field cohesion is "positively associated with legitimation and negatively associated with competitiveness and ecological responsibility."

The last motivation context is individual concern for the natural environment, in which "personal values can influence a firm's ecological responses."  "Individual concern will be positively associated with ecological responsibility and legitimation."

Bansal, P. Roth, K. (2000 August). Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1556363