Trends in corporate and social attitudes toward the treatment of public resources, externalities and the environment

This study was designed to investigate the attitudes of consumers and corporate executives toward corporate treatment of public resources, externalities and the environment. The objective of this study is to establish an attitudinal typology that will help monitor this aspect of the business-government-society relationship as it exists today and use this typology to clarify trends and issues in this relationship that may help improve future management decision-making and policy development.;The research was divided into two parts. The first part recorded the attitudes of corporate executives in two industry types, aerospace and software, toward the treatment of corporate externalities, public resources, and environment. The second part recorded the attitudes of citizens/consumers toward the corporate treatment externalities, public resources, and environment. This research used primary data that was collected by questionnaires. The purpose of the questionnaire was to collect statistically valid and vital information on the environmental attitudes from the two population groups. Three hundred eighty nine usable surveys were collected from groups, consumer/citizen and corporate executives. The researcher used several statistical treatment techniques to analyze the data collected in this study. These included Cronbach's Alpha, ANOVA, t-Test, descriptive statistics and cluster analysis to test the attitudes of consumers and corporate executives and then categorize their respective attitudes toward externalities, the use of public resources, and the environmental issues.;The statistical analysis of the empirical data yielded the following: (1) A majority of corporate executives are more concerned about the corporate creation of externalities, the public resources, and the environment than in the past five years. (2) A majority of citizens/consumers are more concerned about the corporate creation of externalities, the public resources, and the environment than in the past five years. (3) There are no significant differences in attitudes between the aerospace and software industries toward the use of public resources. (4) Corporate executives are less concerned about the creation of externalities than citizens/consumers. However, corporate executive and consumer groups are equally concerned about the public resources. (5) In terms of corporate strategies dealing with these three dimensions, externalities, public resources, and the environment, corporations in both industries apply similar strategies to manage these issues. (6) This research clustered the research respondents into distinct psychographic groups on the dimensions of attitude toward externalities, public resources, and the environment. (7) Finally, this research included additional demographic findings in the area of attitudes toward those three dimensions, externalities, the public resources and environment. Most of them confirmed and are consistent with past studies while a couple of findings actually conflicted with previous research.