The impact of stakeholders’ influence strategies on environmental performance: a moderated mediation model

1 The impact of stakeholders’ influence strategies on environmental performance: A moderated mediation model Elisa Alt1; Emilio Pablo Díez de Castro2; Francisco Javier Lloréns-Montes3 1 PhD Candidate in Management, University of Seville, [email protected] 2 Professor of Management, University of Seville 3 Professor of Management, University of Granada Abstract The present study examines the association between stakeholders’ influence strategies and environmental performance, within a natural-resource-based view framework. Using survey data from a cross-country and cross-industry setting of 170 firms, we tested a moderated mediation model with bootstrapping methods, assessing the mediating role of firms’ proactive environmental strategies and the moderating role of organisational learning capabilities. Results revealed that firms’ proactive environmental strategies acted as a mediator between stakeholders’ influence strategies and environmental performance only when employees’ usage influence strategies was the independent variable. Specifically, proactive environmental strategies mediated the indirect effect when learning capabilities were high but not when they were low. Our findings demonstrate that environmental strategies and learning capabilities are key mechanisms in explaining how employees might advance the corporate greening agenda and ultimately impact firms’ environmental performance. Key words: environmental performance; learning capabilities; moderated mediation; perceived uncertainty; proactive environmental strategies; stakeholders’ influence 2 Introduction Among all the potential antecedents of firms’ environmental proactivity, stakeholders’ pressures stand as the central determinant factor (González-Benito and González-Benito, 2006). Stakeholders are defined as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives” (Freeman, 1984, p. 46), and thus have been considered to strongly affect the development of environmental management capabilities (Buysse and Verbeke, 2003). Particularly within the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm (Hart, 1995), a stakeholder integration capability is a key resource that companies may use to foster their environmental strategies, and subsequently achieve competitive advantages and better environmental performance. In this context, some studies have contributed substantially to our understanding of stakeholders’ influences on the adoption of proactive environmental strategies (e.g. Aragón-Correa et al., 2008; Darnall et al., 2010; Rueda-Manzanares et al., 2008; Sharma and Henriques, 2005). However, none of them has considered environmental performance as a dependent variable. On the other hand, studies that have focused on the impact of stakeholders’ pressures on environmental performance (e.g. Kassinis and Vafeas, 2006; Kock et al., forthcoming) did not account for the mediating role of environmental strategies. In this paper we intend to address this gap, by simultaneously looking at the direct effect of stakeholders’ influence on firms’ environmental strategies, and at the indirect effect of this influence on environmental performance. As performance outcomes may be conditional on the intensity of organisational learning capabilities displayed by firms (Baker and Sinkula, 1999), we also aim at testing these capabilities as moderators. Furthermore, we aim at looking at different types of influence strategies adopted by various stakeholders. Depending 3 on the type of influence strategy adopted by different groups of stakeholders, relations with firms may be either collaborative or confrontational (Sharma and Henriques, 2005), thus producing divergent outcomes. Theory development Stakeholders’ influence strategies and proactive environmental strategies Different types of stakeholders may use various influence strategies to further firms’ environmental practices and environmental performance. These influence strategies vary mainly as a function of the resource dependence (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978) between firms and stakeholders, according to Frooman’s (1999) typology. In scenarios of low interdependence or stakeholder power, stakeholders as environmental NGOs and local communities (Sharma and Henriques, 2005) may choose withholding strategies to influence the firm. In scenarios of firm power or high interdependence, stakeholders as customers and employees may opt for usage strategies. Specifically, withholding strategies are rather confrontational (e.g. local community protests), in that they may determine “whether the firm gets the resource it needs”, and usage strategies are rather collaborative (e.g. employee suggestions), in that they may determine “whether the firm can use the resources in the way it wants” (Frooman, 1999, p. 196). Thus, failing to perceive and manage these strategies may lead firms to risk their reputation and legitimacy, and miss valuable opportunities of developing green competencies (Buysse and Verbeke, 2003; Delmas, 2001). Within the NRBV framework, the capability of managing stakeholders’ influence strategies, often termed stakeholder integration (Hart, 1995; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998), is a sine qua non of proactive environmental management (Aragón-Correa et al., 2008; Darnall et al., 2010; Delmas and Toffel, 2008; González-Benito and González-Benito, 2006; 4 Rueda-Manzanares et al., 2008; Sharma and Henriques, 2005). Therefore, managers act as mediators of stakeholders’ influence (Fineman and Clarke, 1996), and examining managerial perceptions of such influence is critical to understand which stakeholders and which strategies can contribute to environmental advances (Banerjee, 2001; Henriques and Sadorsky, 1999). Most important, if stakeholders’ influences are a central determinant of proactive environmental strategies, they might indirectly contribute to improvements in firms’ environmental performance. As previous research has shown, the level of integration of environmental issues into firms’ strategic planning processes, or the adoption of environmental strategies, is a strong predictor of positive environmental performance (Anton et al., 2004; Chan, 2005; Judge and Douglas, 1998). Hypothesis 1: The perceived impact of stakeholders’ influence strategies will be positively associated with a firm’s proactive environmental strategies. Hypothesis 2: A firm’s proactive environmental strategies will be positively associated with its environmental performance. Hypothesis 3: A firm’s proactive environmental strategies will mediate the relationship between its stakeholders’ influence strategies and its environmental performance. Organisational learning capabilities Organisational learning is an essential process for strategic renewal (Crossan et al., 1999), and related capabilities fundamentally feed four processes, also known as the 4Is (Crossan et al., 1999): intuiting and interpreting (individual level), integrating (group level), 5 and institutionalising (organisational level). From an organisational level perspective, the orientation of the firm towards these processes could be essentially captured in three synergistic capabilities: commitment to learning, shared vision, and absorptive capacity. A commitment to learning capability “influences whether an organisation is likely to promote a learning culture” (Sinkula et al., 1997, p. 309), thus opening spaces to individuals’ intuiting and interpreting processes. Advancing in the organisational learning steps, collective action would follow through integrating processes, thus requiring “shared understanding by members of the group” (Crossan et al., 1999, p. 528), or a shared vision capability (Aragón- Correa et al., 2008; Hart, 1995). However, “continued investment in individual and even group learning may be counterproductive if the organisation does not have the capacity to absorb or utilise it” (Crossan et al. 1999, p. 535). Thus, developing a capability of absorptive capacity, defined as “a set of organisational routines and strategic processes by which firms acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit knowledge for purpose of value creation” (Zahra and George, 2002, p. 198) is of particular importance to organisational learning (Sun and Anderson, 2010). In this sense, a capability of absorptive capacity would not only culminate in the institutionalising stage of the organisational learning ladder, as well as integrate all 4Is, enabling feedback and feed-forward (Crossan et al., 1999) learning processes through stages. Usually linked to competitive advantage and innovation outcomes, as research and development (R&D) intensity (Wang and Ahmed, 2007), absorptive capacity only recently has been associated to corporate greening in some studies (Pinkse et al., 2010; Wolf and Primmer, 2006). Previous research has evidenced the positive relationship between organisational learning capabilities and proactive environmental strategies (Aragón-Correa et al., 2008; Zhu et al., 2008), as well as their moderating role on the relationship between strategy and performance 6 indicators (Baker and Sinkula, 1999). Consistently, such moderation may as well be applied to the environmental management realm. Hypothesis 4a: The greater a firm’s learning capabilities, the stronger the positive effect between its proactive environmental strategies and its environmental performance. Hypothesis 4b: Learning capabilities will moderate the positive and indirect effect of stakeholders’ influence strategies on a firm’s environmental performance. Specifically, a firm’s proactive environmental strategies will mediate the indirect effect when learning capabilities are high but not when they are low. Method Participants and procedures We tested our hypotheses using an online survey directed at CSR, environmental, and sustainability managers and directors. We targeted key respondents in these corporate positions because they are directly involved in the adoption of environmental strategies and in efforts to enhance environmental performance in general (Winn and Angell, 2000). The study population was drawn from a global directory of corporate non-financial reporting (CorporateRegister.com). In April 2009, the directory contained reports from 5216 firms in a wide range of countries and industries. We proceeded to scan 4216 corporate reports spanning from 2006-2009 for managers and directors email addresses, eliminating those industries that were irrelevant for the purpose of our study, such as government, NGOs and consultancy firms. Considering all available addresses, our target population consisted of 1577 firms, which were contacted between June-October 2009. After sending 3 reminders for 7 potential participants, we obtained 196 answers and a response rate of 12.4%. Incomplete and irrelevant answers were deleted, and 170 firms accounted for our final data set. Sample characteristics are described in Table 1. Table 1. Sample Characteristics Average Work Experience in the Field (N = 165) 9.98 (SD a = 9.32) years Average Job Tenure (N = 163) 12 (SD a = 10.02) years Size (N = 169) Large (> 1000 employees) 129 (76.3%) Medium (250 – 1000 employees) 22 (13%) Small (< 250 employees) 18 (10.7%) Industry (N = 170) Financials 33 (19.4%) Industrials 32 (18.8%) Utilities 26 (15.3%) Consumer Services 18 (10.6%) Basic Materials 17 (10%) Consumer Goods 17 (10%) Telecommunications 8 (4.7%) Health Care 7 (4.1%) Oil & Gas 6 (3.5%) Technology 6 (3.5%) Country Development Level (N = 170) Advanced Economies 132 (77.6%) Emerging and Developing Economies 38 (22.4%) Continent N = 170 Europe 108 (63.5%) Latin America 24 (14.1%) Asia 17 (10%) Northern America 10 (5.9%) Oceania 7 (4.1%) Africa 4 (2.4%) a Standard Deviation Measures1 Stakeholders’ Influence Strategies (SIS). We assessed SIS by using Sharma and Henrique’s (2005) withholding (9 items) and usage (8 items) influence strategies scales. We asked respondents to rate to what extent these influences were important in shaping their firms’ environmental practices (from 1= No impact to 7 = Complete influence). Exploratory principal component analysis with varimax rotation revealed that items formed three factors 1 Survey items and exploratory factor analyses results are available upon request. 8 with eigenvalues over 1: withholding SIS (9 items, α = .938), customers’ usage SIS (3 items, α = .907), and employees’ usage SIS (3 items, α = .807). Proactive Environmental Strategies (PES). We measured the degree of implementation of PES in sampled firms by using 10 items from Aragón-Correa (1998) scale, complemented by 2 additional items introduced by Martín-Tapia et al. (2008) and Rueda-Manzanares et al. (2008). Respondents were asked to rate the development of 12 environmental management practices in their organisations (from 0 = We have not addressed this issue at all and have no plans to do so in the near future to 7 = We are the leaders on this in our sector). Exploratory principal component analysis with varimax rotation showed that items formed three factors. However, the factor structure was unclear, as 3 items had loadings over .500 in more than 1 factor. For this reason, we measured PES as the arithmetical mean of the scores on the 10 items (α = .890), as in Aragón-Correa et al. (2004). Environmental Performance. Environmental performance was measured with a 5-item scale (α = .884) drawn proposed by Hubbard (2009). Managers and directors were asked to rate whether their firms’ current performance (2008/2009) on each indicator was better or worse than prior performance (2006/2007), using 7-point Likert scales (from 1 = Much worse to 7 = Much better). Although our original intention was to use corporate reports to assess environmental performance indicators, the heterogeneity of our sample implied significant industry differences in accounting conventions (Powell, 1995), and thus reports differed substantially in content. Nevertheless, the use of subjective perceptions of managers and directors to measure firm performance is widely accepted in the strategy and ONE literatures (e.g. Aragón-Correa et al., 2008; Branzei et al., 2004; Clemens, 2006; Chan, 2005; Judge and Douglas, 1998; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Organisational Learning Capabilities. We gauged organisational learning capabilities by using respondents’ ratings of 5 items from Szulanski’s absorptive capacity (1996) scale (α = 9 .918), 4 items of Baker and Sinkula’s (1999) commitment to learning scale (α = .867), and 3 items from Aragón-Correa and colleagues’ (2008) shared vision scale (α = .813). Respondents were asked to rate their extent of agreement with statements concerning their firms’ organisational learning capabilities (from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree). Exploratory principal component analysis with promax rotation showed that items formed three highly correlated factors (correlations ranging from .491 to .541). In order to reduce the potential threat of multicollinearity, we then measured organisational learning capabilities as the arithmetical mean of the scores on the 12 items (α = .911). Control variables. Profitable firms are more likely to invest in environmental management improvements that might impact environmental performance (Ambec and Lanoie, 2008; Bansal, 2005). Therefore, we controlled for financial performance by using Judge and Douglas’ (1998) 4-item scale (α = .896). Considering the cross-industry nature of our sample, respondents were asked to rate their organisations’ performance in four categories relative to other firms in their specific industries. Additionally, we used dummycoded variables to control for industry effects, size measured as the number of employees according to three categories (see table 1), and country development level (cf. Raines and Prakash, 2005). Results In table 2 we present the correlations and descriptive statistics for all continuous variables. An examination of the correlations revealed that all the three SIS variables were positively related to PES, but only employees’ usage SIS results were significant (r = .36, p < .01). Therefore, employees’ usage SIS was the only independent variable in our mediation 16 chain having financial performance as an outcome variable. To our knowledge, our study is the first to test similar relationships having environmental performance as an outcome variable. In this sense, our paper shifts from the ‘pay to be green’ to the ‘how to be green’ question, suggesting that the NRBV may successfully respond to reiterating calls for studies investigating how companies become more responsible, sustainable or green through their structures and processes (de Bakker et al. 2005; Bowen 2007; Peloza and Yachnin 2008; Wood 2010). Although the impact of stakeholders on environmental strategies is a frequent topic in ONE research, the differentiation among different types of stakeholders and their different influence strategies is relatively new (e.g. Darnall et al., 2010; Sharma and Henriques, 2005). In this regard, we contribute to current theory by identifying a category of SIS that is consistently salient and relevant to shaping more general PES (and consequently improving environmental performance) across various industries and countries. Furthermore, we provide a new perspective on the role of organisational learning capabilities in the corporate greening process. Specifically, we examined organisational learning capabilities as moderators of the NRBV causal chain, rather than including them as antecedents. In doing that, we highlight that strong organisational learning capabilities not only contribute to strategic renewal themselves, but also intensify the benefits reaped from the capability of perceiving and managing SIS, in our case employees’ usage SIS. Managerial Implications For managers, our results pinpoint that employees are critical to environmental management success across different industries and countries. Moreover, this influence is strengthened in firms that display high organisational learning capabilities. These findings highlight the importance of investing in applied training and development 17 of employees, and of cultivating a culture of learning and easy flow of information among hierarchical levels. Employees might act in the interstices of their job descriptions, or adopting an intrapreneurial stance towards the intended change-making process (Brenneke and Spitzeck, 2010), as determined by diverse individual characteristics and organisational contexts. In order to leverage these influences, and thus strategically engage employees to improve environmental performance, middle and top-level managers play a critical role not only enabling bottom-up communication, but also supporting employees’ efforts throughout the many different levels and departments of the firm. Limitations and Future Directions Three major limitations characterise our study. First, the cross-sectional nature of our data only allows us to establish associations among researched variables, as causality cannot be inferred. Second, by applying our study in a cross-industry setting, we had to sacrifice industry-specific measures for generalisability, thus possibly excluding interesting aspects that would add to the understanding of SIS’ impact on environmental performance in certain contexts. Third, due to data limitations, we could not assess whether the CSR, environmental, and sustainability managers sampled had effectively decision-making power, what might affect their perceptions regarding measured variables (Darnall et al., 2010). As regards future research, the questions herein explored offer a number of potential extensions. In terms of methods, future studies could shed more light on the dynamics of the relationships between SIS and environmental performance adopting industry and countryspecific qualitative case studies (see e.g. Jiang and Bansal, 2003), as well as longitudinal data collection. This type of design would allow researchers to define in detail the environmental strategy profiles of sampled firms and the stakeholder groups involved (Buysse and Verbeke, 2003), as well as changes across time. As regards quantitative methods, multi-level studies 18 could deepen our understanding of the role of organisational learning capabilities in the NRBV causal chain at the individual, group, and organisational levels, clarifying the links among stakeholders’ influences, environmental strategies, and environmental performance. In terms of theory, we envisage the extension of our moderated mediation model in two fronts. 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