Research On The Motivation And Performance Effect Of The Diversity Of Corporate Environmental Practices

As a national strategic, the environmental protection gains lots of attention. However, grim reality makes it people depressed, especially after the documentary film Under the Dome published, environmental protection again becomes a focus. Based on the reality that much has done in environmental protection while little gained, this research focus on the diversity of environmental practices. s. As pollution costs more and people realize the importance of environmental protection, environmental strategy has become the essential strategy concerning corporates’ survival and development. To satisfy the external demands and internal pursue of efficiency, diverse corporate environmental practices have been developed. However, the refinement of environmental didn’t match the expectation, which cause lot of questioning, making organizations keep an alerting distance from corporate environmental practices, which is of harm to sustainable development. To address this puzzle, this research explores the diverse characters, antecedents and influence mechanism of corporate environmental practices, and tries to provide reference for decision and application of corporate environmental practices.On the basis of theoretical research, using multi-case ground analysis, this paper dig the concept and meaning of corporate environmental practices and found the substantive and symbolic dimensions, which is the foundation of following two subset researches. In the research of antecedents, this paper compared the difference of substantive and symbolic environmental practices from perspective of external institutional pressure and internal managerial pressure. In the research of influence on performance, compared the differences in performance of two different environmental practices, and examined the moderating role of media exposure.Overall, this research comes up following conclusion.First, using grounded analysis, extract two key dimensions of environmental practices i.e. substantive environmental practices and symbolic environmental practices. Substantive environmental practices refer to the real actions to enhance the efficiency of resource and energy use or other ways to decrease and eliminate the pollution. Symbolic environmental practices describe these highly visible and symbolic actions aimed to show its own cognition and sense of environmental protection, shape and refine corporate image, gain social understanding and support.Second, external institutional pressure and internal managerial pressure have different impact on substantive and symbolic practices. As to external pressure, the more environmental regulation, the more symbolic practices, and market competition facilitate substantive practices. In examination of internal pressure, the leadership cognition matters in selection of environmental practices. Leaders with throughput experience prefer substantial environmental practices. Powerful leaders can also influence the choice of environmental practices, that is, more powerful the leaders, more symbolic environmental practices.Third, with different practices conditions, the corporate performance differs. Specifically, in symbolic conditions, the performance is positively impacted; while in substantive conditions and greenwash, show no significant results. At the mean time, media exposure plays a moderating role, which amplifies the influence of environmental practice on performance.Compared to existing literature, this research contributes in these aspects.Innovation in key constructs. Former studies take environmental practices as a whole analyzing unit, ignored the mutli-dimension of the concept. This research applied grounded analysis, defining the two dimensions of substantive and symbolic environmental practices, unlocked the black box of environmental practices.Innovation in research logic. This research integrates inertia and managerial perspective in organizational study, analyzes the different antecedent of symbolic and substantive practices in term of external institutional pressure and internal managerial pressure. Synthetically putting institutional pressure in macro level and humanity orientation difference in micro level into consideration reflects a thinking of multi-level analysis.Innovation in research perspective. Existing researches have examined the relationship between environmental practices and performance; however, few have taken conditions into consideration. In different conditions, the performance is differently impacted, and the moderating role of media exposure is uncovered. This research explains the contradiction that absence certain agreement on the relationship between environmental practices and performance, provides a novel perspective for relevant research.