| Existing views on how corporations resolve environmental problems are polarized with one side seeing corporate environmental investment as a cost with an inherent trade-off between economic and environmental concerns; and the other side asserting the moral obligation for corporations to do so. This study adopts a holistic view to resolve the problem by proposing a conceptual framework of corporate environmental behavior (CEB) through the linking mechanism to synthesize the seemingly diverged views.;Data are collected from twenty-nine corporations in Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta, Beijing, and England. Concurring with the conceptual framework, competitiveness, legitimacy, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are identified as key motivations of CEB. Among these three motivations, CSR has the most obvious direct impact on CEB. Notably, attitudes toward CSR vary significantly among corporations, and CSR is critically linked to the extent of managerial engagement in CEB. With some corporations successfully linking CEB with competitive advantage, the findings clear the causal ambiguity between engagement in CEB and competitive advantage. Several strategies in terms of reputation building, productivity improvement, market positioning, and capability enhancement are identified. The study enriches theory development of the two divergent perspectives: (a) strategic management and (b) CSR by suggesting a theory of strategic management embracing CSR in building competitive advantage, and the latter affirming engagement of CEB in improving corporate financial performance. |
