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This study aims to examine the impact of perceived institutional force on environmental strategy, and the moderating role of institutional incompleteness.

This study tests hypotheses employing hierarchical regression model based on a survey of 317 Chinese manufacturers.

The results reveal that perceived business and social force have positive impacts on symbolic environmental strategy. Perceived social force has a positive impact on substantive environmental strategy and a negative impact on greenwashing. Further analysis suggests that perceived social force has a stronger effect on substantive environmental strategy than perceived business force. Moreover, institutional incompleteness strengthens the impact of perceived business force on substantive environmental strategy, and the impact of perceived social force on symbolic and substantive environmental strategy.

This study establishes a framework integrating distinct types of perceived institutional force and environmental strategy and provides a new perspective on measuring greenwashing to extend environmental strategy literature.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the forces that prompted a Finnish food manufacturing company to implement environmental management system (EMS) and performance management system (PMS). The paper also aims to describe how and why environmental issues were integrated onto a balanced scorecard (BSC).

The paper utilizes both qualitative and longitudinal case study approaches. Semi‐structured interviews are the main source of empirical data; these were conducted by both researchers.

The forces driving the implementation of the EMS changed from external to internal forces over time. The initial purpose of EMS implementation was to obtain an environmental certificate. Later on the forces turned to internal ones when the causal link between improving environmental performance and profitability was recognized. The PMS implementation, as well as the PMS and EMS integration, had internal forces driving them. The company integrated environmental indicators into its BSC, which thus connected the EMS and PMS. This integration demonstrated the financial impacts of the environmental improvements.

The limitation relates to the methodological issues when the results can be generalized theoretically.

If dealing with environmental issues is considered to potentially increase profitability, there must be a great potential to improve environmental performance at the same time. If environmental measures are integrated into a BSC, they are monitored and discussed more precisely. The BSC is thus a worthwhile tool for reporting information on environmental performance. The construction of an EMS and a PMS requires a co‐operation between different functions and levels of the organization. Finally, the forces for improving EMS and PMS can emerge both from outside and inside.

This paper contributes to the empirical research on environmental and performance management by integrating these two issues, and also illustrates that forces are dynamic rather than static.

Since a single environmental strategy is not sufficient to deal with the various institutional forces that firms are facing, this study proposes ambidextrous environmental strategy and aims to explore its drivers. Based on the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework and resource orchestration theory, the authors investigate the configurational effects of perceived institutional force, green intellectual capital (GIC) and paradox cognition on achieving ambidextrous environmental strategy.

To explore these configurational effects, this study uses two-waved survey data from 317 Chinese manufacturing firms and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method.

There are three equivalent configurational paths leading to ambidextrous environmental strategy. The findings suggest that firms with paradox cognition can better orchestrate GIC to achieve ambidextrous environmental strategy under different perceived institutional force. This study also finds three substitution effects between distinct conditions.

This study contributes to the existing literature by introducing the concept of ambidexterity into the field of environmental strategy and using the AMC framework to explore the configurational paths driving ambidextrous environmental strategy.

This study seeks to understand how regulatory and competitive forces impact firms' actions and innovation performance. The study investigates how firms strategize internally and externally to address regulatory and competitive forces, and how such actions influence firms' innovation performance.

The data were collected via a survey of 217 managers of business organizations in Nigeria.

Regulatory forces have a positive relationship with both absorptive capacity (AC) and information sharing (IS). Competitive forces, on the other hand, only have a negative relationship with IS but not with AC. AC has a positive relationship with innovation performance, while IS, surprisingly, does not have a positive relationship with innovation performance.

The study contributes to knowledge by empirically validating the relationships between environmental forces and innovation performance; more importantly, the study uncovers the underlying factors, i.e. IS and AC that link environmental forces and firms' innovation performance.

Manufacturers are facing growing institutional pressures to enhance the manufacturers' sustainability. Establishing appropriate environmental strategy and implementing green supply chain integration (GSCI) are imperative initiatives for them. Nevertheless, prior research has predominantly examined the individual net impacts on sustainable performance. Drawing on the strategy-structure-environment (SSE) framework and configurational perspective, this study investigates the synergistic effects and multiple equivalent combinations of environmental strategy and GSCI under diverse institutional forces.

To empirically validate this relationship, the present study utilizes fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze two-wave survey data collected from 317 manufacturers in China.

The findings indicate that individual dimension of environmental strategy and GSCI is not independently necessary. However, when combined, this results in seven equifinal configurations that lead to high sustainable performance. Combining all dimensions of environmental strategy and GSCI leads to the simultaneous achievement of high environmental, economic and social performance under perceived social pressure.

This study offers firms the flexibility to select from a range of pathways, allowing the firms to strategically filter and develop diverse combinations of environmental strategy and GSCI. These choices empower firms to enhance the firms' sustainable performance while navigating various institutional forces.

This study contributes to the existing literature by utilizing the SSE framework to investigate the configurational paths that influence sustainable performance. Additionally, this work introduces the fsQCA method to enhance the understanding of sustainable performance in the literature.

This study of environment management systems implementation in Swedish universities contributes to the dialogue about the role of management systems as tools in developing sustainability in higher education.

The empirical study is based on Government directives that make environmental management systems implementation compulsory for all public organisations in Sweden, annual environmental reports of Swedish universities for the years 1997‐2002, their internet home pages, and a survey.

Many universities focus only on direct environmental aspects like paper use and waste handling, even though the main tasks of the universities, namely education, research and co‐operation with the surrounding society, that is the indirect aspects, are likely to have a considerable environmental impact. The organisation of the environmental work and the placement of the environmental coordinator also vary. Two main patterns appear; the coordinator has a function in the service department or an administrative function in the president's office. The goal of certification increases the likelihood of the environmental coordinator being placed in the president's office.

The aim is to increase the understanding of why and how a concept that was first introduced in industry is applied to institutions of higher education.

This study focuses around the central question of whether or not the relative importance of conformity to institutional norms varies as markets become more competitive.

Using data gathered for 187 managed health care plans in the US, this study uses hierarchical regression analysis involving blocked variables.

This study finds that conformity to technical environmental requirements has a significant impact on performance at all levels of competition. However, the importance of conformity to institutional norms increases as markets becomes more competitive.

From the perspective of MCOs, this means that managers need to carefully monitor the prevailing technical and institutional environmental forces and match their responses according to the competitiveness of their individual markets. From a societal perspective, this study suggests that improved health care delivery is likely to result from increased competition in the managed care market.

Prior research has shown that conformity to social norms is important for MCO performance. However, this is the first study to examine the whether the importance of conformity to social norms varies as a function of market competition.

Explains the factors that influence corporate behaviour towards the environment. There is a tendency for business to ignore environmental costs in order to reduce production costs and stay competitive. However, there is a growing trend towards “green” consumerism reflecting the increasing number of consumers who prefer to buy products that satisfy high standards of environmental protection. Consequently, it is becoming profitable to sell “green” products in both the domestic and international markets. The “pull” of the market is reinforced by the “push” resulting from environmental legislation which sets higher standards of environmental quality. A recent survey of business opinion confirms that environmental issues are of growing importance to companies and more than half go beyond the requirements of the law. This suggests that companies are becoming proactive in their management of environmental problems and are beginning to exploit the commercial opportunities that arise from raising environmental standards.

The widening rift at the macro level between the proponents of economic growth and those of environmental protection may have triggered forces acting in the opposite direction at the micro‐level where competitive performance is increasingly becoming a function of the ability of firms to respond to environmentally‐defined strategic advantages. We cite examples of current corporate behavior which suggest a stages model of responses to environmental threats and opportunities. The model portrays an evolutionary process in which competitiveness and environmental goals may converge to become complementary forces driving pro‐active firms toward a strategy of competitive environmentalism.

The recent economic/environmental discourse on development issues has led to a new paradigm of development, called here the “eco‐economic development model”, but usually known as sustainable development (including both ecological and economic concerns), which has successfully substituted the traditional model of economic development in general acceptance. However, new models usually imply new rules and perhaps a new type of market, yet policy issues within the eco‐economic development paradigm are being addressed with theoretical constructs and a state of mind as if we were still in the old paradigm – perhaps because the nature and the internal structure of the new paradigm are not yet well known and understood, as nobody has apparently looked into this. It should be expected that the two paradigms are not equivalent to each other, and therefore, they should be addressed differently. This paper presents a qualitative approach, from a systematic point of view, which can be used to highlight how different the two paradigms are in terms of structure and policy implications. Then, this information is used to provide an answer to three questions: is the economic development market the same as the eco‐economic development market; if not, how many invisible hands are there in the eco‐economic development market; and what are the environmental, social, and economic policy implications of this situation?. Shows that new paradigms require a new line of thinking to market policy and planning.