Sustainability or Profitability? How Communicated Motives for Environmental Policy Affect Public Perceptions of Corporate Greenwashing

Abstract

Companies in the energy sector face a dilemma regarding how to communicate their environmental policies to the public. Communicating that environmental policies and activities are motivated by concern for the environment could elicit positive reactions, but may also lead to accusations of corporate greenwashingthe idea that companies deliberately frame their activities as 'green' in order to look environmentally friendly. The results of three experiments demonstrate that people easily suspect greenwashing when an energy company invests in environmental measures. Importantly, suspicions of corporate greenwashing are reduced by acknowledging economic motives instead of communicating environmental motives for such investments. Suspicion of strategic organizational behavior mediates the effect of communicated motive on perceived corporate greenwashing. This indirect effect occurs primarily among people who are not by nature very skeptical about organizational communications in general. These findings highlight the need to think carefully about how to communicate corporate environmental policies to the public.

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Put Reputation at Risk by Inviting Activist Targeting? An Empirical Test among European SMEs

“…This paper explores a potential negative effect of engaging in CSR, namely that it invites more CSR monitoring by NGOs and media and therefore puts reputation at risk by increasing complaints. Earlier research based on experiments with students showed that a company's communication of investments in environmental measures may increase the perception of corporate greenwashing if people suspect strategic behavior (De Vries et al, 2015). But, as far as we know, there are only two studies that tested the so-called reputational liability effect among activist movements (King and McDonnell, 2012;McDonnell et al, 2015).…”

“…While most papers look at the positive effects of CSR, others look at the potential negative reputational effects (Rhee and Haunschild, 2006;Wagner et al, 2009;De Vries et al, 2015). King and McDonnell (2012) challenged the insurance-like capability of CSR by pointing at the so-called reputational liability effect.…”

“…The policy implication is that when preparing a stakeholder dialogue, SMEs should be careful in their selection of stakeholders and take care that the expectations are not set too high to prevent disappointment. Furthermore, if the SME is predominantly interested in the dialogue because of economic reasons, it better just communicates this motivation, because research has shown that this raises less suspicion than communication of intrinsic motives (De Vries et al, 2015;Leonidou and Skarmeas, 2015).…”

Sustainability and Sustainable Development

“…Critical researchers have noted the tensions between symbolic sustainability (or the "talk" of "being green") and substantive sustainability (i.e., the "walk"), and the temptation for corporations to focus on the former while ignoring the latter, in an effort to save costs (Walker & Wan, 2012). Despite this temptation, however, research has established that ignoring substantive sustainability results in consumer censure and financial losses, as customers and regulators quickly figure out the mismatch between organizational rhetoric and practice (de Vries et al, 2015). Moreover, critical poststructural scholars aver that sustainability talk and eco-speak might serve an aspirational function, so that continued discussion of sustainability in the public sphere and industry circles eventually produces institutional pressures on organizations to walk the talk (Livesey, 2002b).…”

CSR and technology companies: A study on its implementation, integration and effects on the competitiveness of companies

“…Desde un punto de vista práctico las empresas tecnológicas pueden utilizar los resultados de este estudio como un punto de apoyo para potenciar la integración de la RSC en su estrategia corporativa a través de medidas concretas de RSC como la formación de sus trabajadores, el conocimiento sostenible y la comunicación con los stakeholders entre otros y aprovechar las sinergias en la gestión creadas entre los sistemas de gestión normalizados y la RSC, pues la integración de la RSC en empresas tecnológicas, como ha quedado demostrado, tiene una relación directa con la competitividad en línea con otros estudios (De Vries, Terwel, Ellemers & Daamen, 2015;Swanson & Zhang, 2012).…”