Research On Institutional Logics And Environmental Strategic Choice

Environmental strategy is an enterprise strategy formed from the natural environment problem in order to reduce the destructive impact on the natural environment.Proactive environmental strategy is an important dimension of environmental strategy.It is intangible managerial innovations and routines that require organizational commitments towards improving the natural environment to realize the sustainable development of society and enterprisesand which are not required by law.Existing literatures focus on the driving factors of proactive environmental strategy from the view of Stakeholder Theory and Resource-based Theory.However,the existing theory lacks the guidance of how to promote the formation of proactive environmental stratege and lacks a systematic research on the promotion mechanism.This paper attempts to study the formation path and promotion mechanism of proactive environmental strategy from the perspective of institution and cognition.Based on the institutional logics theory,we discuss the unique institutional environment faced by Chinese enterprises and point out that decision makers’ cognition,the external institutional environment of strategic choice and cultural roots consist of the state logic、market logic and social logic.In addition,we build analysis framework of strategic choice under the influence of multiple institutional logics.There are 3 principles in attention-based view theory including Principle 1:Focus of attention,Principle 2:Situated attention,and Principle 3:Structural distribution of attention.Based on the research of relationships among institutional logics,decision makers’ cognition and strategic choice and 3 principles,we analyze decision makers’ cognition from the local to the whole,including cognitive process,cognitive focus and cognitive structure under the institional logics and explore the influence on proactive environmental strategy.Also we consider factors of situated attention impact on cognitive structure and unique boundary effect of the relationship between cognition and strategic choice.We mainly focus on three theoretical issues:(1)how does the cognitive focus of decision makers play an intermediary role in the relationship between multiple institutional logic and proactive environmental strategy?(2)how does the cognitive structure of decision makers affect the proactive environmental strategy and what is the boundary of its function?(3)what are the reasons for enterprises’differentiation strategy choice under the multiple institutional logic?How does the cognitive process of decision makers influence the strategic choice of enterprises?In order to solve these three questions,we carry out the following qualitative and quantitative research.Firstly,147 questionnaires were distributed to enterprises’ decision makers in manufacturing industry.The results show that state logic and social logic have positive effect on proactive environmental strategy,while market logic has a negative effect on proactive environmental strategy.Institutional logics influence the proactive environmental strategy of enterprises by influencing the cognitive focus namely cognition of controllability and urgency.The state logic and social logic have positive effects on both cognition of controllability and urgency.Market logic has a negative effect on them.Cognitive focus plays an intermediary role in the relationship between institutional logics and proactive environmental strategy.Secondly,I discuss the influence of the cognitive structure to proactive environmental strategy from the whole perspective and considered the unique boundary effect of situated attention factors.Management freedom degrees was elected as a moderator variable.90 listed firms are chosen as research samples.The cognitive structure data are measured by text analysis method.Through correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis,we find that the degree of management freedom has a moderating effect on the relationship between decision makers’cognitive structure and proactive environmental strategy.The positive impact of decision-makers’ cognition on proactive environmental strategy will be weakened in state-owned enterprises.Thirdly,I explore the process of institutional logic and decision makers’ strategic choice,and discovers and excavates deep theories by case studies under the circumstances of the ’anti-smoking in public area’.The study finds that based on the analysis of the legitimacy appeal of the above three kinds of logic,decision makers mix different institutional logics to form selective coupling logic,and then form two kinds of conflicting legitimacy cognition,namely the social legitimacy cognition represented by the government and the public with strong health awareness and the economic legitimacy represented by the special group of smokers and shareholders pursuiting immediate economic interests.The study also finds that the decision maker’s positive mental ability is an important factor affecting the decision maker’s cognition.In addition,the decision maker cognition influences environmental strategy(proactive strategy and passive strategy).Finally,I summarize the main conclusions of the above research and expounds the theoretical model of institutional logics on strategy.I put forward suggestions for government policy making and decision makers.