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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.

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.

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 paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Business force has a positive effect on symbolic environmental strategy, but perceived social force has positive effect on both symbolic and substantive environmental strategy and negatively affect greenwashing.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Based on organizational information processing theory, this research explores how big data analytics capability (BDAC) contributes to green supply chain integration (GSCI) and the contingency role that data-driven decision culture plays.

Using the two-wave survey data collected from 317 Chinese manufacturing firms, the authors validate the hypotheses.

The results show that big data managerial capability has positive impacts on three dimensions of GSCI, while big data technical capability has positive impacts on green internal and customer integration. Moreover, green internal integration mediates the impacts of big data technical capability and managerial capability on green supplier and customer integration. Finally, data-driven decision culture alleviates the positive impacts of big data technical and managerial capability on green internal integration.

The findings suggest that firms can leverage big data technical and managerial capability to enhance information processing capability for achieving a higher degree of GSCI. Further, the critical role of data-driven decision culture in affecting the link between BDAC and GSCI should not be overlooked.

This research contributes to literature on green supply chain management by revealing the role of BDAC in improving GSCI.

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities.

Thompson’s (2007) and Eagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015.

ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage.

This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.

This paper aims to explore how a Malaysian palm oil company responded to the pressure for change towards sustainability in their sustainability reporting of negative incidents and in actual sustainability practices.

The study used qualitative methodology through an interpretive case study of a palm company. The study gathered primary and secondary data via semi-structured interviews with key organisational members and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informal conversations, focus groups, document/annual report content analyses and observations. Symbolic and substantive management was used as the theoretical lens to explain the findings.

After experiencing a series of negative events regarding their social and environmental performance, the case company responded by using selective disclosure and a symbolic/legitimising strategy to address the majority of recurring negative events. In actual practice, the company changed structurally but policy-implementation gaps remain despite these changes. Strategically, the company changed in terms of its expansion policy but remained unchanged in traceability issues. The increased awareness of sustainability in the company’s culture appeared to suffer in favour of profit and cost/efficiency considerations that remain prominent. Both substantive and symbolic changes were found in both reports and practice but were more inclined to be symbolic.

The study provides guidelines for companies changing towards sustainability in both practice and reporting, in their effort to contribute to sustainable development goals.

The study provides evidence of symbolic and substantive changes as complementing activities instead of a dichotomy, which was mostly assumed in previous literature and suggests companies adopt a combination of these depending on the severity of sustainability-related issues, level of scrutiny and cost/efficiency considerations.

This study aims to address how the ISO 14001 standardisation and certification process improves substantive performance in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the development of an environmental management control system (EMCS).

A qualitative cross-case interview design with those responsible for the implementation of an environmental management system (certified to ISO 14001) in SMEs is adopted to inductively “theorise” the EMCS.

The design and monitoring of environmental controls are often beyond the scope of the SMEs’ top management team and include extra-organisational dimensions such as the external audit and institutional requirements. This suggests more complex control pathways for SMEs to produce EMCS that primarily function as packages and are broader than the analytical level of the firm. Here, controlling for environmental performance exists at strategic and operational levels, as well as beyond the SMEs’ boundaries.

Various internal controls are put forward for SME owner-managers to meet environmental targets (e.g. gamification and interpersonal communication strategies). This builds upon a broader accountability perspective wherein formalised hierarchical control is only one route for ensuring sustainable action within the ISO 14001-certified SMEs.

This study contributes to a more sustainable society through developing an understanding of how environmental sustainability is substantively managed by SMEs to improve performance for current and future generations.

This paper, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is one of the first to establish how SMEs control for environmental sustainability from empirically derived evidence. In doing so, it provides an example of the EMCS for the SME context.

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental responsibility (ER) on consumers' green customization intention (GCI), as well as the separate and joint moderating effects of consumers' negative perceptions and environmental claim type (ECT) on the relationship between ER and GCI.

In this study, two online experimental questionnaires and one between-subject lab experiment were conducted to test all hypotheses.

This study found that high-ER consumers are more likely to choose environmental options in the product customization process (versus low ER). The effect of ER on consumers' GCI is moderated by consumers' negative perceptions of green consumption (e.g. green skepticism and perceived environmental premium (PEP)). Additionally, ECT's joint moderating effect and consumers' negative perception of green customization consumption can be decreased by a substantive (versus associative) claim type in message framing.

The findings provide new insights into the factors affecting consumers' GCIs and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different ER levels should not be neglected when examining the value of green customization. Second, consumers' green skepticism and PEP could reduce consumers' GCI. Third, the use of substantive environmental claims may also be particularly helpful for companies' communication strategies regarding consumers' low-level negative perceptions of green options.

While previous studies state “environmental responsibility” as a key characteristic of general green consumption, the authors extend that to a green customization process and connect that with consumers' negative perceptions and ECT. In addition, the separate and joint moderating effects of consumers' negative perceptions and ECT were examined. Thus, these findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between ER and green customization.

As the cost of completing a transaction, the green merger and acquisition (M&A) premium paid on mergers can influence whether the acquisition creates value or not. However, studies linking M&A premiums to firm value have had mixed results, even fewer studies have examined the effect of green M&A premiums on bidders’ firm value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how green M&A premiums affect firm value in the context of China’s heavy polluters.

Using 323 deals between 2008 and 2019 among China’s heavy polluters, this paper estimates with correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Green M&A premiums are negatively associated with firm value. The results are more significant when firms adopt symbolic rather than substantive corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Robustness and endogeneity tests corroborate the findings. The negative relation is stronger when acquiring firms have low governmental subsidy and environmental regulation, when firms have overconfident management, when firms are state-owned and when green M&A occurs locally or among provinces in the same region. This study also analyzes agency cost as an intermediary in the relationship between green M&A premium and firm value, which lends support to the agency-view hypothesis.

This study provides systemic evidence that green M&A premiums damage firm value through agency cost channel and the choice of CSR strategies from the perspective of acquirers. These findings enrich the literature on both the economic consequences of green M&A premiums and the determinants of firm value and provide a plausible explanation for mixed findings on the relationship between green M&A premiums and firm value.