Greening the Firm: The Politics of Corporate Environmentalism

Previews:"Greening the Firm makes an important and original contribution to the literature on corporate environmentalism. This well-researched and theoretically sophisticated analysis links the study of environmental management to both organizational theory and political science. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in better understanding the dynamics of the business response to environmentalism." ---- David Vogel, University of California, Berkeley"A 'must' reading for political scientists, business strategists, economists, and all others interested in corporate responses to environmental challenges. Aseem Prakash shows how a combination of disciplined empirical inquiry guided by insightful theoretical probes generates new understandings transcending the common wisdom. This book contributes to the theory of the firm as well as to the emerging literature at the intersection of environment, business, and policy analysis." ---- Nazli Choucri, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"Greening the Firm shines the light of analysis where it has seldom been -- inside the "black box." It explores and explains why some firms pursue beyond compliance environmental activities while others do not based upon their internal processes, players, and politics. The book helps advance the debate about corporate greening beyond "one-size-fits-all" prescriptions based upon external pressures alone." ---- Stuart Hart, University of North CarolinaBook Description:Greening the Firm examines why firms selectively adopt "beyond-compliance" environmental policies, the ones that are more stringent than the requirements of extant laws. It employs a new-institutionalist perspective and also draws insights from sociological institutional theory and stakeholder theory. It argues that existing explanations, especially neoclassical economic theory, based on factors external to firms are under-specified and a focus on internal dynamics is also required. "Beyond-compliance" policies are adopted, if at all, due to two types of intra-firm processes: power-based and leadership-based. It focuses on ten cases in two firms: Baxter International Inc. and Eli Lilly and Company. Data was collected by interviewing numerous managers, attending environmental policymaking meetings, and examining internal documents. Consequently, this book is one of the select few that actually examine the internal working of firms on environmental issues in a theoretically rigorous way. It makes a significant theoretical contribution to a broader set of literature often subsumed under the "theory of firm" and its findings and conclusions are generalizable across firms and issue areas. Aseem Prakash is Assistant Professor, Department of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the School of Business and Public Management; Department of Political Science; and The Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washingto