Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top management support to (...) the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

Corporate, Social, Ethical and Environmental Reporting should ideally discharge the accountability of an organisation to its stakeholders. Voluntary reporting has been characterised by a dearth of neutral and objective information such that the advocates of SEER recommend that it be made compulsory. Their underlying rationale is that legally specified disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms will enhance the quality of such reporting. This paper sets out to explore how realistic this scenario actually is, in view of the conflicting interpretations in the (...) literature on this subject. To that end, a survey of the reporting patterns of 78 of the largest Spanish companies between 2001 and 2003 examines the extent of their compliance with the ICAC-2002 standard, which obliged them to make environmental disclosures in their financial statements. The results suggest that progressive and improved regulation could increase the volume and quality of SEER disclosures. They also suggest, however, that persistent non-compliance means that the problems associated with voluntary disclosure still exist. Finally, through an impression management perspective, the study reveals, the diverse strategies, ranging from dismissal to concealment, that are employed by companies to avoid transparency. As regulation improves and enforcement expectations rise, it becomes more difficult to dismiss compulsory reporting norms. As a result, some firms engage in more complex concealment strategies to attain corporate legitimacy, depriving stakeholders of regulatory information. The latter point serves to reconcile apparently contradictory explanations in the literature as to whether legitimacy theory might explain partial compliance with SEER regulation. (shrink)

This study focuses on why some companies in developing countries go beyond environmental regulations when implementing their corporate environmental social responsibilities or citizenship behavior. Drawing mainly upon the new institutional theory, this study develops a conceptual framework to explain three institutional factors: companies’ market orientations, industrial characteristics, and corporate identities. Accordingly, we suggest that companies from developing countries that are oriented to markets in developed countries, operate in highly concentrated industries, and have missionary identities adopt corporate environmental citizenship behavior by (...) going beyond environmental regulations. The study also discusses the theoretical, policy, and managerial implications of the conceptual framework. (shrink)

This article investigates stakeholder expectations associated with corporate environmental disclosure. Several articles have studied the effect that stakeholder pressure has on environmental disclosing strategies. In this article, we extend previous research to an examination of the influence of external, internal, and intermediary stakeholder groups or constituencies in turn to clarify the demands of multiple stakeholders as to firms' disclosure of sufficient and adequate environmental information. The sample comprised Taiwanese firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Our results show that the (...) level of environmental disclosure is significantly affected by stakeholder groups' demands. External stake-holder groups, such as the government, debtors, and consumers, exert a strong influence over management intentions regarding the extent of environmental disclosure. Internal stakeholder groups, such as shareholders and employees, impose additional pressures on firms to disclose environmental information. As for intermediate stakeholder groups, environmental protection organizations, and accounting firms, these can greatly influence managerial choices regarding their environmental disclosure strategies. (shrink)

In recent years, an optimistic view of international economic integration countering the pollution haven hypothesis has gained momentum. It argues that international integration can benefit developing countries' environments by fostering the adoption of voluntary environmental standards, such as ISO 14001 certification, coined as the "trade up" argument by Prakash and Potoski (2006). This paper investigates the validity of the "trade up" argument in the context of China. This paper finds that international trade does gear up the adoption of ISO 14001 (...) standards in China through increasing pressures from international green customers. However, our model and case studies suggest that the adoption of ISO 14001 certification does not necessarily improve firms' compliance with existing environmental regulations in China. We also find that in China, ISO 14001 certification motivates little, if any, environmental performance improvement beyond bottom-line environmental regulations. This finding suggests that we need to treat the "trade up" argument with caution, especially as the assertion was made that "Chinese authorities also could use ISO 14001 as an alternative to regulations" in consideration of limited policy enforcement capability (Conway, 1996; Christmann and Taylor, 2001). ISO 14001 is a complement to, instead of a substitute for, environmental regulations. (shrink)