Industry codes as agents of change: responsible care adoption by US chemical companies

Jennifer Howard, Jennifer Nash and John Ehrenfeld

Business Strategy and the Environment, 1999, vol. 8, issue 5, 281-295

Abstract: Industry‐generated codes of environmental, health and safety practice represent one response to societal calls for improved corporate environmental management. Such codes seek to build a collective identity among members, improve members’ environmental performance, and demonstrate this improved performance among stakeholders and critics. This paper studies the implementation by 16 companies of the US chemical industry’s Responsible Care code. We examine whether and how Responsible Care adoption has influenced company practice, and find considerable variation both in how companies implemented the codes and in how organizational members interpreted the importance of the codes for their organization. While some practices had been adopted uniformly by all companies, discretion in Responsible Care implementation was exercised. Furthermore, similar practices were adopted when they were seen as contributing to organizational image, while variation remained when organizational image was not at stake. These findings show that adoption of a voluntary code of environmental practice does not guarantee that companies follow a uniform set of practices or comply fully with the desired norms. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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