How industry peers improve your sustainable development? The role of listed firms in environmental strategies

Abstract

Factors driving firms to become more sustainable have been widely investigated in the literature on environmental strategy, but some important horizontal factors are still missing, such as influence from peers in the same industry. Drawing on signaling theory and expectancy theory, we complement existing studies by highlighting the role of listed firms in raising other firms' awareness and motivation of adopting environmental strategies, while taking the moderating capability factor into account. By setting our study in the context of listed and nonlisted private‐owned enterprises in China, the empirical analysis of 1,391 nonlisted firms indicates that the number of listed firms in an industry has positive effects on both reactive and proactive environmental strategies of nonlisted firms. The superior performance of these listed peers motivates nonlisted firms to adopt a proactive environmental strategy but constraints the reactive one. These effects are further strengthened by the relative scale of a nonlisted firm.

Board gender diversity and environmental performance: An industries perspective

“…Byron and Post () suggested that researchers should look to the institutional contexts in which firms operate to determine specific circumstances where women as board members offer the greatest value. Furthermore, stakeholders' expectations and attitudes toward environmental performance depend on the unique characteristics of certain industries (Bansal & Roth, ; Bowen, ), and industry peer pressure is found to be linked with both reactive and proactive environmental strategies (Yang, Wang, Hu, & Gao, ). Li et al () argued that studying the industry context would provide insight into potential differences that gender diversity at the board level might have based on industry characteristics.…”

How market value relates to corporate philanthropy and its assurance. The moderating effect of the business sector

“…Business sector is a factor that can be associated with the market value of the company (Jia & Zhang, ). The sector in which a company operates could have an effect on the distribution of resources, public exposure, and stakeholder expectations (Jain, Aguilera, & Jamali, ; Siddique & Sciulli, ; Yang, Wang, Hu, & Gao, ). Therefore, firms in specific sectors (e.g., with more visibility, more need to promote good public relations or more social impact) are more likely to develop social practices, whether unilaterally or in response to demand, that inform stakeholders of the firm's social commitment (Aqueveque, Rodrigo, & Duran, ; Gómez‐Bezares, Przychodzen, & Przychodzen, ; Yang et al, ).…”

When companies improve the sustainability of the natural environment: A study of large U.S. companies

“…Similar to Yang et al (2018), this study uses the total dollar value of laggard companies' investments in research and development as the proxy of their investments in proactive environmental strategies. Promotion of a sustainable natural environment requires amendments in operating processes (Braungart, McDonough, & Bollinger, 2007).…”

“…Banerjee (2002) suggests that the environmental orientations of companies determine their strategies. This paper focuses on the latter and contributes evidence of a process that governs investments in proactive environmental strategies, and builds on the evidence of competitive dynamics affecting investments in environmental strategies (González-Benito & González-Benito, 2006;Yang, Wang, Hu, & Gao, 2018). This paper relies on institutional theory and the resource-advantage theory of competition-recognizing that companies compete on environmental issues (Bansal & Roth, 2000)-and on indications that companies are generally business-focused when pursuing environmental actions (Karnani, 2011;Landrum & Ohsowski, 2018).…”