Research On The Low-carbon Mode Construction From The Perspective Of Organizational Legitimacy

As the global climate warming is considered as a great threat to the sustainable development of human society, many countries in the world have launched a low-carbon development strategy and measures. As carbon emissions are main sources of energy consumption, countries will develop a more operational carbon reduction targets after the expiry of first commitment period under the Kyoto protocol at the end of2012. With requirements of low-carbon development has become more and more strong, path of carbon emission reduction experiences a gradual transition from the macroscopic management to a macro and micro combination. Low-carbon economy at present is still in the stage of enterprise exploratory action under the push of government mandatory emission reduction. While there is no mature low-carbon management mode from which enterprises can draw lessons from,"greenwash" phenomenon appeared and enterprise low-carbon management practices fell in the puzzle and difficulties. As there is a paradox between the pursuits of benefit maximization and the social responsibility of energy conservation and environmental protection. Although some scholars have tried to use "economic externality theory" and "ecology theory" to explain that paradox, the micro aspects have not yet been touched upon and the management perspectives have still left alone.As the core content of the new institutional economics and the most important action logics, organizational legitimacy emphasizes that the evolution of organization is not only derived from the pressure of production technology and material resources, but also from the social regulation, cultural norms, the public belief. Only when the behavior of an enterprise in a certain social structure of standard system, value system and belief system is desirable, proper, appropriate, it appears to be right for existence. If the enterprise ignores the structural elements of the institutional environment (rules, norms, beliefs, and customs, etc.), it will pay a real price or even to die. No doubt it will remedy the defect exists in the current theory to explain enterprise low-carbon management and play an important theoretical and realistic role on the ecological management research. To this end, this paper carried out the following research work:(1) Defining the concept and dimension of organizational legitimacy to build theoretical basis for the low-carbon management legitimacy; Carding the veins of the organizational legitimacy and in view of the research deficiencies to clear the orientation of this study.(2) Exploring the construction process of enterprise low-carbon management legitimacy from the aspects of enterprise external adaptation and internal integration, building the conception model and putting forward some relevant proposition through the theoretical deduction:In the field, responses to the government laws and regulations for energy conservation and emissions reduction, reactions to low-carbon consumption demands help an enterprise to gain regulative, normative and cognitive legitimacy. The elements in the fields interact with each other to form a stable and lasting external legitimacy. Within the enterprise, the low-carbon consciousness, the introduction of social legal low-carbon assessment tools, the products with low-carbon characteristics till to the formation of low-carbon management ritual can help companies achieve internal legitimacy. The four dimensions do not work separately, but cooperate with each other and develop in deepening way.(3) Keywords frequency statistics and longitudinal case study are adopted to validate the concept model and some relative propositions. By keywords frequency statistics, the external legitimacy model is validated. Interactions among different dimensions are revealed and support of related propositions is verified. By longitudinal case study, the internal legitimacy mode is validated:using discourse analysis in linguistics to classify and code the enterprise interview data and literature data, using the context diagram, causal network diagram to present the enterprise low-carbon management legitimacy process respectively and through the case copy test to verify the initial low-carbon legitimacy mode and relative propositions and at last, the paper carried on one more deepening and expanding proposition that based on organizational legitimacy:the low-carbon enterprise management mode is a kind of new commercial operation mode, the enterprise can improve resource productivity and customer loyalty to reduce costs, improve market share and gain considerable profit. Through the case enterprise’s financial data and low-carbon performance to prove, it has solved the paradox between the enterprise economic performance and low-carbon management.(4) According to the essence of legitimacy diffusion and imitation, it proposed that enterprises in China can imitate the benchmarking enterprise low-carbon management mode in the field level and formulate the realization path accordingly.Through the above research work, the main research conclusions of this study include:(1) The formation of low carbon enterprise management mode is the enterprise from the perspective of legitimacy is a process of internal integration and external adaptation.(2) About the field level, the legitimacy of the enterprise low carbon management is formed in an order of regulative legitimacy—normative legitimacy—cognitive legitimacy.(3) As for the construction of internal enterprise low-carbon management builds in an order of low-carbon consciousness--ating system—service-oriented production—low carbon management ritual.(4) As cognitive legitimacy is deepest level in the organizational field, there leaves spaces for further verification about whether enterprise low carbon management is really reached the affinity of beliefs and values with the outside world.(5) Low-carbon management ritual is a continued activation process, the formulation of which should experience a long term with the cognitive schemata, low-carbon action framework, low-carbon production process and low-carbon product design.(6) Based on organizational legitimacy, low-carbon enterprise management is a kind of new commercial operation mode, which can effectively solve the paradox between the enterprise economic performance and the low carbon management.(7) Benchmarking imitation is an effective form for the legitimacy diffusion and realization of low-carbon management legitimacy in China.Research contribution of this study is mainly reflected in:(1) Case analysis of enterprise low-carbon management on the perspective of legitimacy enriches the application of theory to the research of enterprise low-carbon behavior.(2) The construction of low-carbon enterprise management mode provides a methodology for the exploration of low-carbon enterprise management.(3) Further development of the proposition demonstrates that by costs reduction and market share improvement, low-carbon management can gain considerable profit and long lasting advantage, which has effectively solved the paradox between the economic performance and the low-carbon requirement.(4) Imitation mechanism caused by the convergence of organization contributes to the spread of the benchmarking enterprise low-carbon management mode and provide a valid path for the realization of enterprise low-carbon management legitimacy in China.Only penetration of the general enterprise low-carbon management mode can explore the effective way to crack the puzzle facing with Chinese enterprises. So the construction of enterprise low-carbon management mode in this paper is based on the regular pattern of organization and the environment interaction and is verified for longitudinal case study through the benchmarking enterprise. It has very strong maneuverability which is good for improvement of the success rate of enterprise low-carbon management.