The authors revisit Hart's natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm and summarize progress that has been made in testing elements of that theory and reevaluate the NRBV in light of a number of important developments that have emerged in recent years in both the resourcebased view literature and in research on sustainable enterprise. First, the authors consider how the NRBV can both benefit from recent work in dynamic capabilities and can itself inform such work. Second, they review recent research in the areas of clean technology and business at the base of the pyramid and suggest how the NRBV can help inform research on the resources and capabilities needed to enter and succeed in these domains.

Arguments can be made on both sides of the question of whether a stringent global corporate environmental standard represents a competitive asset or liability for multinational enterprises (MNEs) investing in emerging and developing markets. Analyzing the global environmental standards of a sample of U.S.-based MNEs in relation to their stock market performance, we find that firms adopting a single stringent global environmental standard have much higher market values, as measured by Tobin's q, than firms defaulting to less stringent, or poorly enforced host country standards. Thus, developing countries that use lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may end up attracting poorer quality, and perhaps less competitive, firms. Our results also suggest that externalities are incorporated to a significant extent in firm valuation. We discuss plausible reasons for this observation.direct investment in developing countries, firm value, firm-level environmental policy

We contribute to the literature on firms' responses to institutional pressures and environmental information disclosure. We hypothesize that CEO characteristics such as education and tenure will influence firms' likelihood to voluntarily disclose environmental information. We test our hypotheses by examining firms' responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and find that firms led by newly appointed CEOs and CEOs with MBA degrees are more likely to respond to the CDP, while those led by lawyers are less likely to respond. Our results have implications for research on strategic responses to institutional pressures and corporate environmental performance.

We examine whether corporate governance matters more for firms facing financial distress. We theorize that financial crisis changes the relative costs and benefits of governance mechanisms and that more independent and smaller boards become more valuable in distressed firms. We further hypothesize that CEO power becomes increasingly beneficial as concentrated power allows the firm to respond more rapidly to the crisis. Event‐history analysis of the failure of publicly traded Internet firms over the period 2000–2002 confirms our hypotheses. Our results suggest that the association between governance and survival depends on firm and environmental context and that one‐size‐fits‐all prescriptions for governance mechanisms are therefore likely to be ineffective. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mandatory information disclosure regulations seek to create institutional pressure to spur performance improvement. By examining how organizational characteristics moderate establishments' responses to a prominent environmental information disclosure program, we provide among the first empirical evidence characterizing heterogeneous responses by those mandated to disclose information. We find particularly rapid improvement among establishments located close to their headquarters and among establishments with proximate siblings, especially when the proximate siblings are in the same industry. Large establishments improve more slowly than small establishments in sparse regions, but both groups perform similarly in dense regions, suggesting that density mitigates the power of large establishments to resist institutional pressures. Finally, establishments owned by private firms outperform those owned by public firms. We highlight implications for institutional theory, managers, and policymakers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.