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This paper presents an analysis of the influence of “Joint Environmental Policy-making” (JEP) in the operation of the company Smurfit Kappa (SK) in The Netherlands, Austria and Denmark (NL&AD). The paper aims to answer the question: to what extend has different levels of jointness and voluntariness of cardboard packaging-chain agreements between federal, governmental and business actors led to different recycling performances within the same company?

JEP's analysis was framed under the model described by Mol, Volkmar and Liefferink by using information from mixed-methods throughout a semi-structured questionnaire for interviews and revision of relevant secondary data. This is a case of cross-national comparison for which origin and implementation level of JEPs were described per country, in accordance with those stages of the cardboard production chain.

Jointness and voluntariness amongst other actors from governmental areas and business ranked high for the Dutch packaging-chain agreements with a visible impact in SK's recycling rates. SK in Austria and in Denmark, in this order, had a lower implementation level of JEPs which could be reflected in a lower recycling performance than in the Dutch SK subsidiaries. The context matters, including both political and social conditions. In particular, the role of householders as a last link in the recycling chain. Based on this, the selected countries share some societal characteristics associated with the environmental public awareness and active social participation.

This paper fulfills an analysis of how environmental policy making is affected by the country context within the same company.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the off-office audit of natural resource assets on the prevention and control of water pollution against a background of big data using a differences-in-differences model.

This study constructs a differences-in-differences model to evaluate the policy effects of off-office audit based on panel data from 11 cities in Anhui Province, China, from 2011 to 2017, and analyzes the dynamic effect of the audit and intermediary effect of industrial structure.

The implementation of the audit system can effectively reduce water pollution. Dynamic effect analysis showed that the audit policy can not only improve the quality of water resources but can also have a cumulative effect over time. That is, the prevention and control effect on water pollution is getting stronger and stronger. The results of the robustness test verified the effectiveness of water pollution prevention and control. However, the results of the influence mechanism analysis showed that the mediating effect of the industrial structure was not obvious in the short term.

These findings shed light on the effect of the off-office audit of natural resource assets on the prevention and control of water pollution, and provide a theoretical basis for the formulation of relevant environmental policies. Furthermore, these findings show that the implementation of the audit system can effectively reduce water pollution, which has practical significance for the sustainable development of China's economy against the background of big data.

This study quantitatively analyzes the policy effect of off-office auditing from the perspective of water resources based on a big data background, which differs from the existing research that mainly focuses on basic theoretical analysis.

The purpose of this study is to formulate a proposal to fill the gap in national legislation, which will increase the effectiveness of mandatory environmental insurance.

This is a review of scientific doctrine and legislation, which shows the problems and prospects for the development of mandatory environmental insurance on the example of one country.

At the moment, environmental insurance in Russia is at the very beginning of its development. Despite the experiments carried out and fragmentary references in the law, there is a classic example of a gap in the law, when the procedure provided for by the norms of law lacks a clear implementation mechanism. To fill this gap and increase the effectiveness of environmental insurance, the authors propose to clearly localize the scope of its operation, fixing the obligation of environmental insurance only for objects that have a significant or moderate negative impact on the environment (objects of categories I and II), provided for by the Federal Law “On mandatory Environmental Protection.”

A new concept of a mandatory environmental insurance contract is substantiated, which optimizes civil liability for causing harm to the environment, life, health and property of citizens (property of legal entities) as a result of accidents and man-made disasters.

A large literature studies why firms self-regulate and “signal green.” However, it has ignored that regulators have enforcement discretion, and may act strategically. We fill this gap. We build a game theoretic model of whether a firm should signal its type through substantial self-regulation. We find self-regulation is a double-edged sword: it can potentially preempt legislation, but it can also lead regulators to demand higher levels of compliance from greener firms if preemption fails. We show how self-regulatory decisions depend upon industry characteristics and political responsiveness to corporate environmental leadership. We have made a number of simplifying assumptions. We assume activist groups cannot challenge regulatory flexibility in court, and that regulatory penalties are fixed and are not collected by the regulator. Firms with low compliance costs confront a tradeoff regarding self-regulation. They can blend in with the rest of the industry, and take few self-regulatory steps. This reduces the risk of regulation somewhat, and preserves their ability to obtain regulatory flexibility should regulation be imposed. Alternatively, they can step up with substantial self-regulation. This better mitigates the risk of regulation, but at the risk of signaling low costs and becoming a target for stringent enforcement should regulation pass. Recent work has found negative market reactions to corporate claims of voluntary emissions reductions, despite the conventional wisdom that it “pays to be green.” We offer a new explanation to scholars and managers: regulatory discretion may undermine the ability of industry self-regulation to profitably preempt mandatory regulatory requirements.

The paper suggested a sustainability indicators framework for industrial parks in contexts where information is weakly reliable or insufficient. The authors tried to cover those gaps and construct an indicators framework by answering the following research questions: can a combination of “adopted international” certifications be locally implemented in the Mexican context to reflect the level of regional sustainability of clusters of companies? How sustainable individual performance can be extended to a cluster of companies through collaborative strategies? What is the level of agreement on key success factors for implementing voluntary certification scheme in Mexican Industrial Parks? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In order to provide a more realistic set of sustainability indicators for Mexican Industrial Parks, the authors first carried out an analysis of secondary information sources for matching sustainability indicators with available related data which is reported by companies along their certification processes. The main purpose of doing this was to construct the indicator framework, which was explored empirically in the second phase of this research. During such phase, the authors validated the indicators framework by means of surveys and interviews to gather the perceptions of Mexican business managers selected from United Nations indicators which were coupled to available certifications in Mexico.

It has been observed that the sustainability indicators framework can be adopted from international structures to the local/regional situation when companies have framed their performance under international certifications allowing to count with a minimum of indicators to be used for sustainability development tracking.

Sustainability indicators in industrial parks is not an addressed topic in Latin America. Mexico can be taken as an example for the other Latin American countries in sustainability trends and shows the current context of the use of this tool for measurement.

This paper aims to explore how environmental management practices impact different dimensions of corporate sustainability. It also explores the mediating impact of environmental regulation and reports on the relationship between environmental management practice and corporate sustainability.

A brief focus group discussion and a preliminary test were conducted through a focused group meeting with industry experts before data were collected from senior management of 116 registered operations in the hospitality and tourism industry in the Maldives. To analyse the data, a mediation model is proposed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Results showed that environmental management practices have a direct and positive effect on corporate sustainability. Furthermore, environmental regulation and reporting positively mediate the effect of environmental management practices on corporate sustainability. Among the sustainability dimensions, it is important to note that the social sustainability aspect has the highest impact, followed by the economic and environmental aspects of corporate sustainability.

Findings provide empirical evidence in understanding achieving corporate sustainability through environmental management practices. The study is practical for stakeholders and policymakers to follow through with the environmental regulations and be transparent on environmental reporting measures that impact overall sustainability.

This study serves as noteworthy research for stakeholders to evaluate against regulatory and reporting requirements for businesses they invest in the future. It adds value to the literature and attempts to advance environmental management and sustainability research in the context of small island developing states.

The paper aims to address regulator-management interactions in environmental policy with reference to direct regulations, social regulations and market-based regulation.

Revision of literature to identify the European Union regulations for companies producing polymers. Expert groups consultation to enrich the information and testing of the expert system (software).

Interactions between actors dealing with environmental policy from government and business sectors cause high and growing transaction costs; in The Netherlands during 1990-2007, they represented an increase from 17 to 21 percent of all environment protection costs. Rapid, 14 percent average annual growth followed the shift from the direct to social regulations in the 1990s. Instead of the shift, better interactions management could have saved nearly four billion euro a year in the EU. In support of this, a web-based expert system is developed in a consortium of small and medium size enterprises and expert centers from seven European countries.

The system, Environmentor, contains checklists with exemplary inputs, outputs, environmental standards and technologies for permits, process for implementation of environmental management systems, as well as an administrative model and auction for the EU emission trading.

This study aims to examine the association between national culture and corporate carbon emissions. Specifically, the research explores how firm-level carbon emissions are associated with Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity and uncertainty avoidance.

The study examines 36,945 firm-year observations across 39 countries and uses panel regressions to assess the association between firm-level carbon emissions and national culture. This research also uses instrumental variable regression to address the potential endogeneity issues. Alternative proxies for culture are used to test the sensitivity of the findings.

The findings of this study reveal that power distance and uncertainty avoidance are negatively while individualism and masculinity are positively associated with corporate carbon emissions. The results are robust to the instrumental regressions and alternative measures of culture.

For policymakers, this research highlights the importance of national culture in assessing the efficacy of potential emissions reduction policies, identifying the possible challenges posed by the cultural differences of the targeted groups and designing policy adjustments accordingly. The local culture in which the branches of multinational corporations operate should be considered when the management implements emissions reduction policies for the business units in diverse cultural settings.

Aligning emissions reduction policies with regional cultural dimensions has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of corporate and national emissions reduction policies, which can contribute to mitigating global climate change adversities.

This study provides insights into firm-level carbon emissions and Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions in a global setting.

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 analyzes the connection between the sustainability performance of Chinese banks and their financial indicators to explore whether sustainability regulations can be implemented without decreasing the financial performance of the banking sector.

The study examined reports and websites of Chinese banks, categorized different corporate sustainability aspects and conducted panel regression and Granger causality to analyze cause and effect variables.

The environmental and social performance of Chinese banks increased significantly between 2009 and 2013. Furthermore, a bi-directional causality between financial performance and sustainability performance of Chinese banks has been found. Based on institutional theory, this interaction may be influenced by the Chinese Green Credit Policy.

The findings suggest that corporate sustainability performance and financial performance are not a trade-off but correlate positively. Further research is needed to analyze the effect of financial regulations, such as the Chinese Green Credit Policy.

According to the good management theory by Waddock and Graves (1997) that claims a positive impact of corporate social performance on financial performance, Chinese banks can invest in corporate sustainability to increase their financial success and re-invest parts of the additional returns – also called slack resources – in sustainability activities.

Chinese banks are able to influence the economy to become greener and less polluting without sacrificing financial returns.

This is the first study to explore the sustainability performance of Chinese banks, including their products and services.