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The role of firm-internal corporate environmental standards for organizational performance

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Abstract

Firms’ environmental approaches frequently encompass strategies for pollution prevention and product stewardship. We apply resource-based theorizing to determine how these two strategies affect the likelihood that a firm will adopt firm-internal environmental-management standards and how such standards relate to organizational performance. We find that pollution prevention improves firms’ competitiveness by enabling the implementation of firm-internal standards that subsequently have positive effects on profitability.

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Notes

  1. Sustainable development is the third core strategy of the NRBV. However, since the conceptual underpinnings and the empirical measurement of a sustainabledevelopment strategy are less clear, we focus on the former two strategies in the remainder of the manuscript—an approach that is consistent with recent literature that draws on the NRBV (e.g., Gabriel et al. 2018).

  2. The response rates are similar to those of surveys on related topics (Belz and Strannegard 1997).

  3. Detailed results on this are available from the authors on request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript at several international conferences and workshops, especially the 2014 Sino-German Workshop on Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Reputation, the 2015 Workshop of the VHB Commission for Sustainability Management and the 2016 Workshop of the VHB Commission for International Management. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and the special issue editor for their valuable feedback.

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  1. Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Christian Schwens

  2. Augsburg University, Universitaetsstr. 16, 86159, Augsburg, Germany

    Marcus Wagner

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  1. Christian Schwens
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Correspondence to Marcus Wagner.

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Schwens, C., Wagner, M. The role of firm-internal corporate environmental standards for organizational performance. J Bus Econ 89, 823–843 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-018-0925-5

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