ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES AND ENVIRONMENTAL AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE: EXPLORING THE MODERATING EFFECT

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ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES AND ENVIRONMENTAL AND
FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE EXPLORING THE MODERATING
EFFECTS OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FORCES

• 3rd AlBan Conference Porto 2009

Elisa de Resende AltUniversity of
SevilleEmilio Pablo Diez de CastroUniversity
of SevilleFrancisco Javier Llorens
MontesUniversity of Granada
Supported by the Programme AlBan, the European
Union Programme of High Level Scholarships for
Latin America, scholarship E06D101365BR
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INTRODUCTION
Proactive environmental practices are positively
associated with financial and environmental
performance (Hart, 1995) x Some proactive
practices may not prompt environmental and
financial improvements as previously expected
(Aragon-Correa and Rubio-Lopez, 2007 Bansal,
2005)
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INTRODUCTION

• Previous studies influence of specific
  endogenous and exogenous factors on performance
  and on the willingness of firms to develop
  proactive environmental practices (Branzei et
  al., 2004 Kassinis and Vafeas, 2006 Delmas and
  Toffel, 2008)
• Few studies have addressed the moderating
  influence of such factors on the
  practices-performance relationship
• Few studies have empirically explored at the same
  time both environmental and financial performance
  as outcomes of environmental practices

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PERCEIVED OCBEs

• Organizational citizenship behaviours directed
  towards the environment (OCBEs) performed by
  employees
• Individual and discretionary social behaviours
  not explicitly recognized by the formal reward
  system and contributing to improve the
  effectiveness of environmental management of
  organizations
• (Boiral, 2008 Organ et al., 2006, p. 3)

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LEARNING DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES

• Absorptive capacity the ability to recognize the
  value of new information, assimilate it and apply
  it to commercial ends
• (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990, p. 128)
• (2) Learning orientation organization-wide
  activity of creating and using knowledge to
  enhance competitive advantage
• (Calantone et al., 2002, p. 516)
• (3) Shared vision a common mental model of the
  future state of the team or its tasks that
  provide the basis for action within the team
• (Pearce and Ensley, 2004, p. 260)

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STAKEHOLDERS INFLUENCE STRATEGIES

• Direct usage strategies high resource
  interdependence between the organization and its
  stakeholders (e.g., customers)
• Direct withholding strategies stakeholders
  control critical resources of the organization
  (e.g., regulators)
• Indirect usage and withholding strategies the
  organization and the stakeholders have no
  resource dependence on each other (e.g., NGOs)
• (Frooman, 1999)

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PERCEIVED ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTY (PEU)

• PEU in the natural environment is likely to have
  a significant influence on the nature of
  strategic decision making and hence business
  performance
• (Lewis and Harvey, 2001, p. 203)
• Complexity of the natural environment

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

• Cross-country and cross-industry setting
• Online questionnaires directed to
  sustainability/CSR/environmental managers
• Objective measures based on reports from the
  participant firms and public documents
• Cross-sectional design

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

• Environmental practices Aragon-Correa (1998)
  scale, with further developments introduced by
  Martin-Tapia (2005) and Rueda-Manzanares and
  colleagues (2008)
• Environmental performance Hubbard (2009) scale
• Financial performance Judge and Douglass (1998)
  scale

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

• OCBEs items adapted from Podsakoff and
  colleagues (1990), Moorman Blakely (1995), and
  Williams and Anderson (1991) scales
• Learning dynamic capabilities Szulanski (1996)
  absorptive capacity scale Baker and
  Sinkula(1999) learning orientation scale and
  Aragon-Correa and colleagues (2008) shared vision
  scale, which includes adapted items from Jehn
  (1995) and Oswald and colleagues (1994) scales

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

• Stakeholders influence strategies Sharma and
  Henriques (2005)
• PEU Lewis and Harvey (2001) scale, which extends
  Miller (1993) scale
• Control for organizational size, executives
  tenure and external assurance of the reports used
  to collect objective data

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

• Final population will include all the
  organizations that have e-mail addresses
  disclosed on their reports (CorporateRegister.com)
  
• Data will be analysed using moderated
  hierarchical regression analysis (Cohen and
  Cohen, 1983)

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Thank you very much!
Elisa de Resende Alt University of Seville,
Spain AlBan scholarship E06D101365BR eliresalt_at_alu
m.us.es