Climate change studies have been gaining increasing importance in the academic debate, and also in the field of organizations and management. Scholars have contributed to this field by borrowing approaches from sustainable business research. However, some authors have raised unanswered questions about the contribution of these studies to the management theories. According to them, climate change studies have failed to provide theoretical insights and too often they have adopted a descriptive and practical approach. Our review describes the theoretical contribution of the climate change papers, identifying the most often used management theories. The analysis results for 28 different management theories indicate that, while some theories such as the institutional and stakeholder theories have been widely debated, the relation between business climate change strategies and other organization theories still appears to be unexplored.

Starting from institutional theory, this study aims to explore the effects of coercive, normative and mimetic pressures on businesses climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. In order to test these hypotheses, the study relies on an econometric model by using data from 487 Italian manufacturing companies collected by a questionnaire-based survey. The empirical model based on a multivariate regression reveals that companies which perceive normative and mimetic pressures are more likely to have a higher climate change sensitivity. Moreover, companies with a higher climate change sensitivity are more likely to adopt both mitigation and adaptation strategies. The article provides several contributions. First the study contributes to the debate among institutional scholars by clarifying which institutional pressures exert a more incisive effect on pushing companies to adopt climate actions. Second, it highlights how internal factors play a mediating role between institutional pressures and business climate responses.

The relation between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and the performance of both safety and environmental management systems has led researchers to investigate the drivers of safety-specific and environmental-oriented OCB. However, although the management of environmental and safety issues is often fully integrated into organizational and managerial practice, a holistic perspective of the drivers of health, safety, and environmental (HSE)-oriented OCB is still lacking. Thus, the aim of the present study is to investigate the antecedents of HSE-related OCB (OCBHSE).Drawing on both the OCB and sustainability literature, data from 135 managerdirect report dyads collected from eight large Italian companies are analyzed, to assess the effect of both situation-related antecedents (i.e., organizational ambidexterity and leadership style) and person-related antecedents (i.e., prosocial values) on prosocial and proactive OCBHSE. Organizational ambidexterity emerges as a direct situation-related antecedent of both prosocial and proactive OCBHSE, whereas management by exception and passive leadership have a negative effect on the OCBHSE in direct reports. Surprisingly, transformational and contingent reward leadership styles do not emerge as significant drivers of OCBHSE. In terms of person-related antecedents, the results highlight that prosocial values in direct reports significantly influence prosocial but not proactive OCBHSE. Finally, as OCBHSE is conceptualized in the study as a dimension that is complementary to formal HSE management structures, our findings can contribute to the general organizational effort to improve HSE performance.

Drawing on Bansal & Roth's model of ecological responsiveness, the study investigates how environmental managers' cognitive framings of sustainability issues and interpretations of field-level contextual factors affect decision-making processes with regard to environmental management system (EMS) internalization. Using data from a survey questionnaire of 457 ISO 14001-certified and EMAS-registered European companies, the research analyses the influence of managers' perceptions of contextual factors (i.e. environmental issue salience and governmental regulatory incentives) and managers' cognitive traits (i.e. managers' environmental concern and cognitive framings of environmental practices) on internalization. The results highlight that, while managers' perceived stakeholders' concern for the natural environment directly influences substantive internalization, governmental regulatory reliefs fail to influence the internalization of EMS. Similarly, managers' environmental concern emerges as an antecedent of internalization, while managers' adherence to an alignment logic between economic and environmental objectives does not contribute to internalization. Furthermore, the study contributes to the conceptualization of substantive internalization of environmental practices, by highlighting the existence of two distinct dimensions of EMS internalization, i.e. operational and strategic internalization.

Environmental management systems have attracted considerable attention from organizational and management scholars, owing to their widespread adoption in most industry sectors. Despite the extensive empirical literature, academic research on ISO 14001 and Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) remains characterized by a technical and pragmatic connotation and scarce theoretical contribution. As this research field approaches maturity, theoretical elaboration is crucial for assessing the current state of knowledge and identifying pathways for future research. The main objective of the paper is to scrutinize the academic literature on standard‐based environmental management, with a focus on identifying organizational and management theories that contributed to the development of the field in the last decades. By critically analyzing 55 papers, the study points out eight dominant theoretical frameworks, mostly pertaining to the field of strategic management. The paper provides an in‐depth analysis of the objectives and findings of each study in the light of its theory of reference in order to contribute insights on the current state of theoretical elaboration of standard‐based environmental management systems research.

Uncertainties posed by climate change limit companies' ability to understand implications of global warming on business and society at large, hampering the adoption of tangible organizational responses to climate change. Understanding climate action thus requires to investigate influential factors of decision‐making under uncertainty, which implies acknowledging managerial interpretations and perceptions about climate issues. Drawing insights from the literature on climate inaction and from corporate sustainability literature, the present study examines awareness of climate change and perceived exposure to climate risks as antecedents of corporate responses to climate change, drawing on a survey of managers of Italian manufacturing companies. In addition, the study tests the moderation of risk tolerance on the relation between perceived climate risk exposure and climate action, suggesting that risk attitudes are a significant factor of decision‐making under climate uncertainty. The results support the hypothesis of the model and thus provide several contributions to the literature on business and climate change. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are also discussed.

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PurposeThe relation between sport and sustainability is a topic that has recently raised a lot of interest among both academics and practitioners. However, in the academic literature, very few studies have investigated which solutions are implemented in football, despite its popularity, to reduce the environmental impact of its events. This study contributes to filling this gap by exploring how stadium managers tackle environmental issues for football events.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have analyzed 94 sustainability reports of major sports events and conducted 6 case studies in 6 different major league stadiums around Europe in the framework of research supported by UEFA and three EU National Football Associations.FindingsThe heterogeneity of practices and goals at both the governance and operational level denote that stadium managers pursue environmental objectives mainly voluntarily and under local pressures. Efforts toward environmental improvement appear to depend on an economic and efficiency rationale, which translates into the adoption of technologies and operational practices characterized by short-term economic returns (i.e. energy and resources savings). As a result, operational practices outnumber governance-level practices.Practical implicationsThe analysis clearly highlights that the fragmentation of operational practices derives from a lack of maturity of governance structures, especially when multiple actors have different – yet mutually influencing – responsibilities on the infrastructures or the planning and staging of football events.Originality/valueBuilding on the notion of the holistic approach to environmental sustainability in sport management the research differentiated environmental practices according to the operational and governance dimensions. While operational practices tackle environmental aspects directly associated with football events (e.g. waste, energy consumption, water usage, etc.), governance-level practices relate to the systemic allocation of environmental roles and responsibilities within the management structure underlying football events.