The authors conducted a qualitative study of the motivations and contextual factors that induce corporate ecological responsiveness. Analytic induction applied to data collected from 53 firms in the United Kingdom and Japan revealed three motivations: competitiveness, legitimation, and ecological responsibility. These motivations were influenced by three contextual conditions: field cohesion, issue salience, and individual concern. In this article, the authors also identify the conditions that likely lead to high corporate ecological responsiveness.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1556363.pdf

Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness

This study operationalizes corporate sustainable development and examines its organizational determinants. Data for this project pertain to Canadian firms in the oil and gas, mining, and forestry industries from 1986 to 1995. I find that both resource-based and institutional factors influence corporate sustainable development. By exploring time-related effects, I also find that media pressures were important in early periods and resource-based opportunities endured over time. This finding challenges the assumption that firms first adopt innovations in response to technical rewards which are later institutionalized. These counter-intuitive results may be attributable to the unique characteristics of the dependent variable, corporate sustainable development. They raise important questions and directions for future research. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20142218.pdf

Evolving sustainably: a longitudinal study of corporate sustainable development

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The author highlights some of the dangers of decentralizations. The benefits of decentralization in allocative efficiency are not as obvious as suggested by the standard theory of fiscal federalism. The assumptions of this theory are fragile. These doubtful benefits might carry a cost in production efficiency, but more empirical research is needed on this point. What is not doubtful is that decentralization runs counter to redistribution and stabilization. Decentralization makes redistributive policies, whether interpersonal or interjurisdictional, more difficult, if not impossible. Decentralization also makes macroeconomic stabilization programs more difficult to implement because subnational government fiscal policies can run counter to national policies. Serious drawbacks or potential drawbacks should be considered in designing any decentralization program. The arguments that the author develops make it easier to understand some of the real choices. These choices are not so much whether to decentralize in general but rather what functions to decentralize - in which sectors, and in which regions. Guidelines can be provided on this. Often, the problem is not so much whether a certain service should be provided by a central, regional, or local government, since the service often has to be provided with the intervention of all three levels of government. The real challenge is how to organize the joint production of the service. Decentralization refers simultaneously to a state and to a process. The virtues and dangers of decentralization are often discussed simultaneously for both concepts. This is a dangerous confusion because decentralization is path-dependent. What is desirable in a given country at a certain point in time depends on the present state of decentralization and the speed at which it has been reached. Much more work, particularly empirical work, is needed -- in review of decentralization (or centralization) experiences in general, as well as those encouraged or supported by the World Bank.

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The dangers of decentralization

This paper includes an empirical analysis of the linkages between environmental strategy and stakeholder management. First, it is shown that several simultaneous improvements in various resource domains are required for firms to shift to an empirically significant, higher level of proactiveness. Second, more proactive environmental strategies are associated with a deeper and broader coverage of stakeholders. Third, environmental leadership is not associated with a rising importance of environmental regulations, thereby suggesting a role for voluntary cooperation between firms and government. Finally, the linkages between environmental strategies and stakeholder management, based on a sample of 197 firms operating in Belgium, appear more limited than expected. Country-specific characteristics may to a large extent account for these results. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Proactive environmental strategies: a stakeholder management perspective

Executive Overview Corporations in North America, Europe, Japan, and in most newly industrializing nations are embracing environmental protection as part of their international competitive strategies. For many firms, the shift to proactive environmental management is driven by pressures from governments, customers, employees, and competitors. Both consumers and investors are beginning to see more clearly the relationship between business performance and environmental quality. The trend toward proactive environmental management is being accelerated by public pressures on governments almost everywhere to assure a cleaner environment. Government regulations have become more stringent, legal liabilities for environmental damage have become more burdensome, and customers have become more demanding. But more importantly, there is growing evidence that firms that adopt proactive environmental management strategies become more efficient and competitive. In many countries, the public has become more vocal in deman...

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Proactive corporate environmental management: A new industrial revolution

The need to decentralize development planning and management has become a recurring theme in the plans and policies of international assistance agencies and developing nations in recent years. With the shifting emphasis in development strategies toward promoting more socially equitable economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poorest groups in developing societies, widespread participation in decision-making is considered essential to the development process, and decentralization has been advocated as a way of eliciting that participation.

Government Decentralization in Comparative Perspective: Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Adopting Corporate Environmental Management Systems

Foreword - Hidehiko Sazanami Implementing Decentralization Policies - Dennis A Rondinelli and G Shabbir Cheema An Introduction Decentralized Development in Asia - Harry J Friedman Local Political Alternatives Administrative Decentralization in Asia - Kuldeep Mathur Decentralization of Development Administration in East Africa - Dennis A Rondinelli Decentralization in North Africa - John R Nellis Problems of Policy Implementation Centralization and Decentralization in Latin America - Richard L Harris The Role of Voluntary Organizations - G Shabbir Cheema Decentralizing Integrated Rural Development Activities - John D Montgomery Interorganizational Linkages for Decentralized Rural Development - David K Leonard Overcoming Administrative Weaknesses Decentralization and Development - G Shabbir Cheema and Dennis A Rondinelli Conclusions and Directions

Dennis A. Rondinelli

Papers

Proactive corporate environmental management: A new industrial revolution

Government Decentralization in Comparative Perspective: Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Adopting Corporate Environmental Management Systems

Decentralization and development : Policy implementation in developing countries

Panacea, common sense, or just a label?