Search Results (29)

With the growing emphasis on corporate environmental responsibility (CER), firms are increasingly seeking ways to strategically leverage digital platforms to foster green innovation and improve environmental practices. Despite this growing interest, empirical studies systematically examining these relationships remain limited. Drawing on the dynamic capability perspective, this study investigates how digital platform capabilities—specifically, digital platform integration capability and digital platform reconfiguration capability—promote green innovation and, in turn, influence CER. The proposed model was empirically tested using survey data from 364 Chinese manufacturing firms and analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that both digital platform integration capability and digital platform reconfiguration capability are positively associated with CER, with green innovation serving as a significant mediating mechanism. These findings contribute to the dynamic capability perspective and the sustainable management literature by clarifying the strategic role of digital platforms in advancing green innovation and strengthening CER. Full article

With growing public concern over environmental issues, organizations are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate a genuine and measurable commitment to environmental sustainability. In this context, understanding how corporate environmental responsibility (CER) shapes employee engagement (EE) is essential. This understanding helps align organizational behavior with both internal goals and broader societal expectations. Although the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on EE has been widely studied, the specific role of CER—a key subdimension of CSR—remains underexplored. To address this gap, we developed a moderated mediation model grounded in social exchange theory, social identity theory, and signaling theory. This model aims to reveal how CER influences EE and through which mechanisms. Based on survey data from 418 employees in large Chinese manufacturing firms, our results show that perceived CER significantly enhances EE. This effect occurs primarily through the strengthening of organizational pride. Furthermore, online media coverage reinforces the relationship between perceived CER and organizational pride. It also amplifies the indirect impact of perceived CER on EE via this pride. These findings contribute to the corporate sustainability literature by showing how credible and visible environmental actions can enhance employee alignment and engagement. Practical implications are discussed for organizations seeking to connect managerial priorities with society’s call for transparent and authentic environmental initiatives. Full article

This article argues that, while Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is gaining traction in the hospitality and tourism sectors, it is skewed in favour of environmental matters to the detriment of social issues. It could thus be more aptly termed ‘Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER)’. This calls for a shift in direction that balances social and environmental matters. Based on the extant literature, this article proposes strategies to achieve such rebalancing. In particular, it proposes the introduction of a CSR rating/classification system that considers various aspects of CSR, suggesting it should be based on international and national regulations or policies. While the recommended strategies will not change the tourism sector’s CSR overnight, they would promote redistribution and enable the sector to contribute to a more egalitarian and just world. Full article

As the concept of sustainable resource usage gains popularity, resource-based companies are faced with the challenge of reconciling environmental responsibility with corporate performance to achieve the “coexistence” of environmental and economic benefits. We take data related to RBCs for 2010–2020 and perform a multiple regression analysis of the data. This study focuses on the role of internal control in analyzing the impact of resource-based companies (RBCs) on corporate financial performance (CFP) while assuming corporate environmental responsibility (CER). The findings reveal that the fulfillment of CER by RBCs positively impacts CFP. We then add a moderating test to observe the role of internal controls in the relationship between the two. The results show that the positive effect of CER on CFP is greater with stronger internal control measures. In addition, we introduce heterogeneity analysis to analyze the effect of firm ownership. The moderating effect is diminished in privately owned companies. This research provides empirical evidence for the moderating effect of internal control on the connection between CER and CFP while also considering the influence of ownership. Full article

Under the background of the water crisis, there has been much research on corporate water responsibility (CWR), a subfield of corporate environmental responsibility (CER). Studies on CWR and CER are mainly focused on isolated factors, such as institutional pressure, corporate features, and managerial perceptions, with a notable lack of consensus. These studies have largely ignored the complex relationship between different contributing factors; thus, the internal mechanism of the multi-level synergistic influence of such factors on CWR or CER remains unclear. Configuration theory forgoes consideration of the correlation between variables and instead analyzes the synergistic effect between variables from the perspective of set theory. Thus, this paper focuses on formal and informal institutional pressure, unabsorbed and absorbed CSR slack, and economic and ethical perceptions, and uses fsQCA to investigate the configurations contributing or unconducive to a high level of CWR from a configuration theory perspective. The results show that three configurations contribute and two configurations are unconducive to a high level of CWR. Managerial perception is foundational for implementing CWR, and ethical perception is a necessary condition for high-level CWR, while a lack of benefit perception contributes to a lower level of CWR. Full article

Facing the current increasingly severe environmental problems, the government and the public make increasingly strong demands for environmental protection. It is the key to sustainable development to study how to motivate enterprises to actively fulfill their environmental responsibilities and practice green production mode. This study selects large steel enterprises of the China Iron and Steel Association from 2009 to 2017 as samples to empirically analyze the effect and mechanism of environmental responsibility on corporate performance. The results show that corporate environmental responsibility (CER) has a significant promoting effect on corporate performance, and green innovation has a significant mediating effect between them. Furthermore, from the perspective of regional and ownership heterogeneity, the differences in the mediating effect of green innovation on the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and corporate performance are explored. Finally, based on the research results, this paper suggests that enterprise managers should balance the relationship between enterprise performance and environmental protection, so as to achieve a “win–win” situation. Full article

In this study, we acknowledge that corporate environmental responsibility (CER) can be implemented in a strategic sense. Given that firms cope with their resource constraints to pursue competitive advantages, firms tend to consider CER activities as a cost they expend rather than a value they invest. This tendency determines the level of investments to develop specific technologies to deal with environmental issues. Accordingly, we conjecture that the level of CER activities (i.e., the extent to which firms engage in various environmental issues) is negatively related to environmental innovation (i.e., the extent to which firms develop environmentally-sound technologies). To test this counterintuitive idea, we sample 623 U.S. public firms between 1996 and 2010 and figure out the relationship between CER and environmental innovation. As a result, we find a trade-off between CER and environmental innovation. In addition, to elaborate the resource-enabling mechanism between CER and environmental innovation, we examine the moderation effects of slack resources (instantiated by current ratios and debt–equity ratio) and find that the moderators show a positive impact on the relationship between CER and environmental innovation. These results suggest that environmental innovation is a dedicated action firms can take for environmental issues and is not automatically derived from their prior CER activities. Full article

This paper focuses on the optimal strategic choice of carbon trading and carbon reduction technology investment under the cap-and-trade system. We consider a carbon-dependent production enterprise that trades carbon emission rights or invests in carbon reduction technologies under the regulation of the cap-and-trade system. The enterprise undertakes corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and aims to maximize the comprehensive benefits of both the economy and the environment. Using numerical simulation, we analyze the impacts of the CER coefficient and initial carbon quotas on the comprehensive benefits, optimal emission reduction rate, and production quantity of the enterprise. Our main contribution is studying the low-carbon strategic option for CER production enterprises to maximize the comprehensive benefits by trading carbon emission permits or investing in carbon emission reduction technologies. We found that the carbon emission trading mechanism plays an important role in promoting enterprises to reduce carbon emissions and is a beneficial supplement to the carbon cap policy. Under different initial carbon quotas allocated by the government, the manufacturer strategically chooses to trade carbon emission rights or invest in carbon reduction technologies. CER is a significant factor in encouraging companies to reduce carbon emissions proactively. Full article

With the development of society and the improvement of environmental consciousness, the performance of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) has elicited increasing attention in recent years. In previous studies, the exploration of the antecedents of CER is far less evident than the exploration of its results, and only few studies have investigated what determines CER engagement from the perspective of supply chain concentration (SCC). Using data from 2413 firms in China from 2013 to 2019, our study uses the fixed effect model and performs multiple robustness tests to examine the impact of SCC on the fulfillment of CER, its transmission mechanism, and the moderating role of technology uncertainty (TU). Empirical results show that SCC has a pivotal negative impact on CER performance, wherein both supplier concentration (SUP) and customer concentration (CUS) are detrimental to CER performance. Further mechanism analysis shows that such negative effect can be explained by the adverse effect of SCC on the operating cash flow (OCF), in which OCF has a partial mediating effect. Moreover, the negative impact of SCC on CER performance is more significant when the uncertainty of firms’ technological environment is stronger. Our study opens the transmission “black box” between SCC and CER performance and incorporates the behaviors of firms, inter-firm relationships, and environmental factors into the same research framework, and provides a theoretical guidance for management practices. Full article

The rapid economic development has severely damaged the ecological environment and affected public health. Firms are the main source of pollution; thus, corporate environmental responsibility (CER) has attracted great attention from the government, shareholders and the public. This study used both the fixed effects model and the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) model to examine the relationship between environmental pollution, environmental regulations and CER for 30 provinces in China, over the period 2005 to 2015. This study drew the following results: first, mandatory CER disclosure policy can significantly decrease environmental pollution. Second, an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between environmental regulations and environmental pollution. Third, environmental pollution has a positive impact on CER. Fourth, an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between environmental regulations and CER. Therefore, it is necessary to find a balance between environmental regulations affecting environmental pollution and CER so that they can effectively reduce environmental pollution and increase the enthusiasm of firms to carry out environmental responsibility activities. Full article

Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) is an important component of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, and an important carrier for enterprises to disclose environmental protection information. Based on the corporate micro data, this paper evaluates the effect of a mandatory CSR disclosure policy on the fulfillment of corporate environmental responsibility by adopting the difference-in-differences model (DID) with the release of a mandatory disclosure policy of China in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment. The study draws the following conclusions: First, a mandatory CSR disclosure policy can promote the fulfillment of CER. Second, after the implementation of a mandatory CSR disclosure policy, enterprises can improve their CER level through two channels: improving the quality of environmental management disclosure and increasing the number of patents. Third, the heterogeneity of the impacts of mandatory CSR disclosure on CER is reflected in three aspects: different CER levels, different corporate scales and a different property rights structure. In terms of the CER level, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the CER level and mandatory CSR disclosure effect. In terms of the corporate scale, mandatory disclosure of CSR plays a greater role in large-scale enterprises. In terms of the structure of property rights, mandatory CSR disclosure has a greater effect on non-state-owned enterprises. Full article

This study aims to propose and empirically test a research model to examine the relationship between prospective employees’ corporate environmental responsibility (CER) perceptions and their attraction to an organization based on social theories. This may be the first study to elucidate how CER perceptions can influence prospective employees’ job-seeking intentions by exploring the sequential mediating mechanism of organizational trust and job-seeking attitudes in a prehire context. Collecting data from a sample of 357 young prospective employees, the research hypotheses were tested using path analysis with AMOS (version 24), a structural equation modeling (SEM) program. The study results revealed direct association of CER perceptions and job-seeking attitudes with job-seeking intentions. Observably, the organizational trust could not predict job-seeking intentions. However, organizational trust and job-seeking attitudes together sequentially and partially mediated the direct effects of CER perceptions on job-seeking intentions. In line with the research findings, some notable theoretical contributions and practical implications for HR professionals have been discussed. The paper concludes by presenting some limitations and future research directions. Full article

The rapid increasing number of automobile products has brought great convenience to people’s living, but it has also caused serious environmental issues, waste of resources and energy shortage during its whole lifecycle. Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) refers to the company’s responsibility to avoid damage to the natural environment derived from its corporate social responsibility (CSR), and it plays an important role in solving resource and environmental problems. However, due to various internal and external reasons, it is difficult for the automobile manufacturing industry to find the key drivers for the implementation of CER. This research proposes a model framework that uses the fuzzy decision-making test and evaluation laboratory (fuzzy DEMATEL) method to analyze the drivers of CER from the perspective of the triple bottom line (TBL) of economy, environment and society. Firstly, the common drivers of CER are collected using literature review and questionnaire survey methods. Secondly, the key drivers are analyzed by using the fuzzy DEMATEL. Finally, the proposed approach was verified through a case study. The research results show that some effective measures to implement CER can be provided for the government, the automobile manufacturing industry and the public to promote sustainable development of Chinese Auto Manufacturing Industry (CAMI). Full article

In this study, we examine various effects of carbon emission regulation enacted in South Korea. We provide empirical evidence of regulated firms strategically hedging against potential risks by increasing the number of directors with environment-related backgrounds. We also find that this relationship is clearly evidenced when the firm is owned by a lower proportion of foreign investors. Further analysis shows that these directors successfully change their firms to become environmentally friendly. Overall, we conclude that the role of governments in promoting green finance is crucial. The findings of this study may be used as a guideline for decision makers and environmental policymakers to create systems and policies to increase the firm’s awareness about the environment in relation to corporate environmental responsibility (CER) ratings of firms. Full article

Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) is increasingly gaining interest among researchers and practitioners. Despite this extensive interest, systematic research regarding the effect of sales on environmental performance remains scarce. In this study, an empirical analysis on a sample of 909 Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2016 showed that sales positively impact environmental performance. This study also showed that corporate innovation mediates the relationship between sales and environmental performance. Furthermore, this study showed that environmental performance has a positive spatial spillover effect. Enterprises appear to promote their own environmental performance as a response to a rise in the environmental performance of their neighbors. The external control theory of organization has important reference significance and explanatory power for CER behavior in emerging economies. Full article