Publications
Publications
- July/August 2004
- Business Strategy and the Environment
Stakeholders and Environmental Management Practices: An Institutional Framework
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
Abstract
Despite burgeoning research on companies' environmental strategies and environmental management practices, it remains unclear why some firms adopt environmental management practices beyond regulatory compliance. This paper leverages institutional theory by proposing that stakeholders—including governments, regulators, customers, competitors, community and environmental interest groups, and industry associations—impose coercive and normative pressures on firms. However, the way in which managers perceive and act upon these pressures at the plant level depends upon plant- and parent-company-specific factors, including their track record of environmental performance, the competitive position of the parent company and the organizational structure of the plant. Beyond providing a framework of how institutional pressures influence plants' environmental management practices, various measures are proposed to quantify institutional pressures, key plant-level and parent-company-level characteristics and plant-level environmental management practices.
Keywords
Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Environmental Management; Adoption; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Organizational Structure; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Competition; Framework; Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms
Citation
Delmas, Magali, and Michael W. Toffel. "Stakeholders and Environmental Management Practices: An Institutional Framework." Business Strategy and the Environment 13, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 209–222.