This study examines the role of contextual and strategic factors in the development of environmental management control systems in manufacturing companies. In particular, the authors test the roles of perceived ecological environmental uncertainty, perceived stakeholder pressures, and the degree of corporate environmental proactivity on the development of environmental management control systems. The main results from a survey of 256 manufacturing companies suggest that companies that perceive greater ecological environmental uncertainty are less inclined to develop a proactive environmental strategy, environmental information system, or formal environmental management control system. Market, community, and organizational stakeholders motivate environmental proactivity, as well as the development of different environmental management control systems. Regulatory stakeholders only encourage the development of an environmental information system.
Corporate environmental responsibility has achieved a high profile as a strategic notion for business and a prominent topic for academia. The diffusion of environmental practices among corporations has resulted notably from pressures from traditional interest groups (Brammer and Milligton, 2003) but also from the emergence of the market for virtue, which gives firms commercial incentives to adopt environmental policies (Vogel, 2005). More companies also recognize the seriousness of environmental threats and accordingly develop strategies and programs to achieve more environmentally friendly products and production processes.
Growing interest in turn has expanded environmental management and environmental accounting research. For example, extensive research explores the principles of environmental accounting and reporting (e.g., Cho and Patten, 2007, Crowther, 2000, Gray et al., 2001, Owen, 2008, Schaltegger et al., 2006 and Unerman et al., 2007), as well as current practices (e.g., Bartolomeo et al., 2000, Burritt, 2004 and Rikhardsson et al., 2005) and the link between environmental and organizational performance (e.g., Henri and Journeault, 2010, McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, Porter and van der Linde, 1995 and Russo and Fouts, 1997). Yet little research addresses environmental strategies, corporate environmental management controls (Capron and Quairel, 1998, Epstein and Wisner, 2005, Henri and Journeault, 2010 and Jansson et al., 2000), or the antecedents of implementing environmental strategies and management control systems (cf. Perego and Hartmann, 2009).
This study investigates contextual and strategic factors associated with the development of environmental management control systems by manufacturing companies. We test the role of perceived ecological environmental uncertainty, perceived stakeholder pressures, and the degree of corporate proactivity in the development of environmental management control systems (EMCS). Using survey data from 256 Belgian manufacturing firms, we confirm a link between environmental strategy and EMCS. More proactive companies develop EMCS. However, companies that perceive more ecological environmental uncertainty are less likely to develop an environmental proactive strategy, an environmental information system, or a formal EMCS. Perceptions of pressures from specific stakeholders can motivate such developments; in particular, managers’ perceptions of pressures from regulatory stakeholders influence the development of an environmental information system directly.
This study thus bridges two research domains—environmental management and management control—and accordingly reveals some key managerial implications of integrating environmental factors into organizational management, which can ensure better control over corporate environmental objectives. This study contributes to management control literature by empirically addressing the factors associated with the development of management control systems in an environmental management context. We further advance environmental management literature by illustrating how and in which conditions a manufacturing company can develop and implement an environmental strategy throughout the organization. In summary, our research develops knowledge of what is happening within organizations in the manufacturing industry, including which factors lead companies to be more environmentally proactive and to develop EMCS, which is a necessary condition for societal transformation (Bebbington and Thomson, 2010).
In the following section, we present a research framework that describes the conceptual model and a set of testable hypotheses. In our discussion of the research methodology, we detail the sample and construct measurements. Next, we summarize the results of a partial least squares (PLS) graph analysis, before we identify our study's contributions, derive managerial implications and limitations, and suggest some avenues for further research.
