Munificence, Dynamism, and Complexity: How Industry Context Drives Corporate Sustainability

Hongquan Chen, Saixing Zeng, Han Lin and Hanyang Ma

Business Strategy and the Environment, 2017, vol. 26, issue 2, 125-141

Abstract: Does external industry context exert an influence on the development of corporate sustainable development? In keeping with the view that environmental responsibility generates new and competitive resources for firms, we posit that three distinct industry contextual characteristics, namely munificence, dynamism, and complexity, can influence corporate environmentally responsible behaviors. Our conceptual framework is supported by empirical evidence that draws on a sample of 746 Chinese listed firms in manufacturing sectors. Our findings suggest that dynamism increases the likelihood of firms behaving in environmentally responsible ways, whereas complexity decreases this likelihood. The relationships between dynamism and environmental responsibility are stronger in firms with low levels of organizational slack. Moreover, we find that resource‐abundant firms are more likely to behave responsibly toward the natural environment in a high‐munificence industry context. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1902

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:26:y:2017:i:2:p:125-141

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1002/(ISSN)1099-0836

Access Statistics for this article

Business Strategy and the Environment is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Business Strategy and the Environment from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().