Chasing the light or chasing the dark? top managers’ political ties and corporate proactive environmental strategy

ABSTRACT

Corporate proactive environmental strategies (PESs), which are guided by proactive pollution prevention instead of passive pollution control, have attracted much attention from academia and industry in recent years. Thus, many previous studies have examined how manufacturers can be motivated to adopt PESs. Drawing on social embeddedness theory, this study investigates the main effect of executives’ political ties (PTs) on PES and the contingent role played by executives’ environmental awareness (EA) in this relationship. Considering the light and dark sides of PTs, this study proposes two competing hypotheses regarding the relationship between PTs and PES. Through a moderator analysis, this study further classifies EA into environmental risk awareness (ERA) and environmental cost–benefit awareness (ECA) and argues that these two types of environmental cognition play different roles in the relationship between PTs and PES. Using survey data collected from 167 Chinese manufacturing firms, the empirical analysis results show that executives’ PTs are positively and significantly related to corporate PES. This positive relationship is strengthened for firms with executives with high ERA but weakened for firms with executives with high ECA.

KEYWORDS:

• Proactive environmental strategy
• political ties
• environmental awareness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71602176) and Major Project of National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 20ZDA088).

Notes on contributors

Zhiwei Yan

Zhiwei Yan is a Ph.D. candidate of the International Business School Suzhou at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and a lecturer of the School of Economics and Management at Shanxi University in China. His research interests focus on corporate environmental strategy. Contact with him can email to [email protected]

Xuerong Peng

Xuerong Peng (corresponding author), Ph.D., is an associate professor of the School of Tourism and Urban-rural Planning at Zhejiang Gongshang University in China. She received her Ph.D. in Enterprises Management from Zhejiang University in China. Her research interests focus on sustainable corporate strategies (e.g. eco-innovation and CSR) in the hospitality and manufacturing industries. Contact with her can email to [email protected] or [email protected]

Seoki Lee

Seoki Lee, Ph.D., is an associate professor of the School of Hospitality Management at The Pennsylvania State University in the USA. His research mainly focuses on hospitality and tourism issues in financial and strategic management, including the following topics: corporate social responsibility, internationalisation, franchising, and diversification. Contact with him can email to [email protected]

Pei Fang

Pei Fang is a postgraduate student of the School of Tourism and Urban-rural Planning at Zhejiang Gongshang University in China. Her research interests focus on sustainable corporate strategies (e.g. eco-innovation and CSR) in the hospitality and manufacturing industries. Contact with her can email to [email protected]