Stakeholder Pressures and Corporate Environmental Strategies: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Stakeholder pressures and corporate environmental strategies continue to be important topics of corporate sustainability. Limited by sample size, there is a lack of general conclusions on which groups of stakeholder pressures are the main drivers of environmental strategies. Amassing a database of 58 empirical studies, the authors divided stakeholder pressures into four groups—internal, coercive, market, and social pressure—and explored the relationship between different pressures and environmental strategies by conducting a meta-analysis. The main result shows that internal pressure is the main driver of environmental strategies. Further empirical results show that stakeholder pressures could have a larger effect on corporate environmental strategies in developed countries and that non-manufacturing firms could change their environmental strategies more easily than manufacturing firms. The results provide the practical implication that a green industry transition is strongly needed in the manufacturing industry, especially for polluting industries, and that firms in polluting industries should implement environmental strategy changes in the future. This paper contributes to clarifying the relationship between stakeholder pressures and corporate environmental strategies based on a meta-analysis.

What Impact Does Corporate Governance Have on Corporate Environmental Performances? An Empirical Study of Italian Listed Firms

“…The board may have an important role in improving a firm's performance since its members can provide direction based on their experience and knowledge [13] and (via their social networks) valuable connections with assets and influential social capital [14]. This will permit managers to enhance the firm's value by making use of specific pro-social strategies [15][16][17]. This may occur in a firm which appoints a director who also has influential roles with other companies, as well as significant experience on boards.…”

Revisiting Stakeholder Theory and Environmentalism: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

“…Starting from Polonsky [4], the stakeholder theory has been repeatedly used by many researchers [5][6][7][8][9] in the corporate environmentalism area. As the concern for environmentalism continues to grow, managers need to understand their relationship with different stakeholder groups and the impact of these groups on their ability to incorporate environmental strategies [10].…”

“…The contribution of this study is three-fold. First, we have considered a list of internal and external stakeholders whereas previous studies [5,[7][8][9] have focused on a limited number of stakeholders' impacts on the environmental disposition of organizations. Second, we have taken top management commitment as mediating construct by putting it at the center of nexus.…”

“…Lastly, we have tested the proposed model from an emerging economy perspective. It is also being increasingly recognized that the nature of environmental issues and responses vary between the developed and developing/emerging countries due to differences in the pressure from different stakeholder groups [7]. The majority of the literature, with very few exceptions, on corporate environmentalism has arrived from the USA and Europe; however, according to Spencer [11] developing and emerging markets should be brought into the picture due to the increase in the industrial development in these markets.…”

How Does Stakeholders Pressure Affect Organization Performance and Employee Wellbeing? Study of Multiple Mediating Roles

“…2.1 Stakeholders Pressure, CSR Oriented Culture, and CSRP Freeman (1984) explained stakeholder theory describing the category and importance of various stakeholders and their demands. Scholars have asserted that firm's internal and external stakeholders exert pressure on it for doing CSRP (Wang, Li, & Qi, 2020). The pressure is exerted on firms not just for them to obey basic law but also to consider welfare of the society (Kowalczyk, 2019;Sarkis, Gonzalez-Torre, & Adenso-Diaz, 2010).…”