Research On The Influence Of External Stakeholders On The Decision-making Of Corporate Environmental Behavior

In recent years,with the prosperity of industrial economy,environmental pollution is becoming more and more serious,which has attracted great attention of the government and the public.Industrial firms,as the major pollution source,are also experiencing increasing external pressures.Facing the threat of stigmatization,how these firms make strategic decision to respond to the requirements of external stakeholders on their legitimacy and obtain competitive advantages has become a key issue that needs to be resolved at this stage.Based on the stigma and stakeholder theory,this dissertation takes the organizational legitimacy needs and achieving completive advantages as the entry points,and attempts to explore the motivation,decision-making process and effect of environmental friendly behaviors of stigmatized firms taking the environmental pollution as research background.The findings can help improve the effectiveness of corporate response strategies to social issues and provide references for corporate implementation of environmentally friendly behaviors.Specifically,the main work of this dissertation is as follows:First,we draw upon the stigmatized category literature and institutional theory to develop a framework to understand the influence of external stakeholders' pressures on the disengagement of industrial firms from a stigmatized category.Using a uniquely compiled dataset of Chinese firms,we find that firms' tendency of disengagement from a regional pollution stigma is positively affected by coercive,normative and mimetic pressures for regional environmental protection and by stigma intensity,and negatively affected by stigma dilution.We also find that(1)the two types of coercive pressures(informal and formal)show diminishing returns to scale in their joint effect;(2)the positive effect of the mimetic pressure is exacerbated by stigma intensity;and(3)dilution of stigma responsibility weakens the positive effect of stigma intensity on firms'disengagement tendencies.Second,we expolored the decision-making process of stigmatized firms by examining the interplay between legitimacy and efficiency considerations in adoption decisions.Drawing on organizational decision-making research,we argue that stigmatized firms will frame formal and informal coercive pressures as threat and opportunity respectively.However,facing the different type coercive pressures,motivations to appear legitimate coexist with motivations to be efficiency and that is related to the content and extent of stigmatized firms' practice implementation.These findings prompt rethinking of corporate decision-making process.Third,we draw upon the stigmatized category literature and strategic stakeholder management model to develop a framework capable of explaining the links stakeholder-oriented governance,stigma density of stigmatized firms,environmental C SR engagement,and financial performance of stigmatized firms.Using a uniquely compiled dataset of Chinese firms from several data sources,we find that the financial performance of stigmatized firms is negatively affected by the stigma label.In addition,stigmatized firms practice more environmental CSR activities than their peers in order to disengage from the stigmatized category,even though corporate environmental CSR engagement is found to be negatively associated with financial performance in current study.Our results also confirm that(1)the financial performance of stigmatized firms is positively affected by two proxies for corporate stakeholder-oriented governance(i.e.,institutional ownership and corporate transparency),and negatively affected by stigma intensity of the respective stigmatized category;(2)corporate stakeholder-oriented governance compensates for the negative effect of environmental CSR engagement;(3)high density of local stigmatized firms provides focal firms with an opportunity to improve their financial performance through environmental CSR engagement;and(4)the positive effects of corporate stakeholder-oriented governance are diminished by the density of local stigmatized firms.The innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:First,about the innovation of the research perspective,taking the Chinese environmental pollution as the research background,this paper takes the industrial firms as the research object.From a relatively unique perspective,the framework has been systematically constructed and empirically validated."Stakeholder pressures—organizations' analysis models of external pressure awareness and environmentally-friendly behavior choices—strategies" are deeply analyzed to explore the driving factors,decision-making process,and impact on business performance of corporate environmental friendly behaviors.Specifically,from the perspective of stakeholder pressures and stigma characteristics,this dissertation analyzes the motivations of corporate environmental friendly behavior;from the perspective of organizational decision-making,it analyzes the interpretation of environmental stigma by firms and their strategic responses to external pressures.Finally,in conjunction with the corporate stakeholder strategy model,it analyzes the influence mechanism of stakeholder-oriented corporate governance and the influence of local stigmatized firms' density on the corporate strategic effect in the external environment.Second,about the innovation of research content,in the analysis of the motivations of corporate environmental friendly behaviors,previous studies mainly discussed the differences in the influence of different stakeholder pressures on corporate behavior.This paper explores the interaction of different stakeholder pressures on corporate behavior based on the verification that different stakeholder pressures have a direct effect on corporate environmental friendly behavior.In particular,coercive isomorphism is the result of a combination of formal and informal pressures.This viewpoint has been mentioned in subsequent studies.However,few scholars have conducted differentiated studies from the perspective of empirical analysis,not even the interactive effects between them.In addition,combined with the specific research background,this paper also analyzes the impacts of different stigma characteristics on corporate environmental behavior,and the strategic adjustment under the joint effect between different stakeholders' pressures and stigma characteristics.In the analysis of the decision-making process in which environmental stigmatized firms respond to external pressures,past research has not attached importance to the cognitive development of organizational decision-making thinking.This article reviews the related research on corporate legitimacy-oriented and efficiency-oriented decision logics.Through theoretical derivation,it analyzes the dominance and compatibility of corporate decision logics under different types of coercive pressures.In addition,the social psychology theory of stigma dilution was incorporated into the analysis framework of corporate interpretation of the external environment,and the paths and dynamic changes in the decision-making process of environmental stigmatized firms fulfilling their social responsibilities were discussed in depth.The study provides a theoretical tool for the study of corporate strategic decision models,and also provides an important reference for corporate strategic management practices.In the analysis of environmental stigmatized firms' performance of environmental social responsibility,there is no unified conclusion on the relationship between corporate social and economic performance.In the context of the new research,this dissertation focuses on the environmental dimension of corporate social responsibility and provides new evidence for the study of corporate social responsibility performance and business performance relationship(ECSR-CFP).Based on the reconciliation model in the stakeholder strategic model,it verified the role of the stakeholder-oriented corporate governance and external local stigmatized firms' density in regulating the relationship between environmental stigma companies ECSR-CFP.The findings can help the environmental stigmatized firms perform better environmental responsibility,be able to assess the situation,recognize the characteristics of the external environment,and choose more effective corporate governance models and social responsibility behaviors.Third,about the innovation of research methods,in the past,studies about stakeholder pressures and the relationship between corporate strategic behavior focused more on qualitative analysis such as case studies.Empirical analysis also used mostly scale forms and lacked empirical tests based on objective secondary data.This paper collected a list of 91,338 companies that were monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China from 2010 to 2016,supplemented by the company's basic information and related database data.Panel data fixed effect regression,paired T-test,one-way ANOVA test,and multiple regression were used.Mathematical statistics methods were used to verify the research questions and assumptions,and a number of robustness tests were performed on the results by replacing variables and expanding and narrowing the sample range,which ensured the reliability of the research conclusions.