Green or greenwashed? Organizational strain as an antecedent to decoupling in corporate environmental sustainability reporting

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Knight, B. (2020). Green or greenwashed? Organizational strain as an antecedent to decoupling in corporate environmental sustainability reporting. Unc Charlotte Electronic Theses And Dissertations.
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Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholarly attention continues to focus on how organizations are responding to stakeholder demands for meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) impact. CSR empirical studies offer evidence of decoupling in corporate policies, implementation, activities, and reporting. Decoupling manifests in several forms; means-end decoupling; policy-practice disconnect; or selective decoupling, a practice where companies may choose to report only favorable aspects of their CSR efforts. When these practices focus specifically on environmental performance, this is typically known as greenwashing. Decoupling may be intentionally deceptive, and deception in corporate reporting is a form of corporate misconduct. Scholars have identified underlying drivers leading to corporate misconduct, including organizational strain. This study integrates neo-institutional theory, institutional isomorphism, and general strain theory, and draws from literature in sociology, criminology, management, and finance/accounting for guidance on organizational misconduct, and early financial indicators of financial and organizational strain. The model examines oft-used financial ratio indicators of cash and debt, and goodwill impairment events to predict decoupling in corporate environmental reporting, and whether socially responsible investment (SRI) ratings moderate the relationships. The unique dataset combining financial data with SRI ratings for 177 firms in 15 environmentally impactful industry sectors yielded mixed results. Results indicated support for the cash ratio negatively related to decoupling and support for an interaction effect with SRI ratings. Hypotheses regarding debt ratio were not supported. The direct effect hypothesis regarding goodwill was not supported, but the study found support for an interaction effect with SRI ratings.

Details
Author

Knight, Barbara

Title

Green or greenwashed? Organizational strain as an antecedent to decoupling in corporate environmental sustainability reporting

Physical Description

1 online resource (117 pages) : PDF

Date

2020

Degree Granting Institution

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholarly attention continues to focus on how organizations are responding to stakeholder demands for meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) impact. CSR empirical studies offer evidence of decoupling in corporate policies, implementation, activities, and reporting. Decoupling manifests in several forms; means-end decoupling; policy-practice disconnect; or selective decoupling, a practice where companies may choose to report only favorable aspects of their CSR efforts. When these practices focus specifically on environmental performance, this is typically known as greenwashing. Decoupling may be intentionally deceptive, and deception in corporate reporting is a form of corporate misconduct. Scholars have identified underlying drivers leading to corporate misconduct, including organizational strain. This study integrates neo-institutional theory, institutional isomorphism, and general strain theory, and draws from literature in sociology, criminology, management, and finance/accounting for guidance on organizational misconduct, and early financial indicators of financial and organizational strain. The model examines oft-used financial ratio indicators of cash and debt, and goodwill impairment events to predict decoupling in corporate environmental reporting, and whether socially responsible investment (SRI) ratings moderate the relationships. The unique dataset combining financial data with SRI ratings for 177 firms in 15 environmentally impactful industry sectors yielded mixed results. Results indicated support for the cash ratio negatively related to decoupling and support for an interaction effect with SRI ratings. Hypotheses regarding debt ratio were not supported. The direct effect hypothesis regarding goodwill was not supported, but the study found support for an interaction effect with SRI ratings.

Genre

doctoral dissertations

Subjects--Topics

Management

Degree

D.B.A.

Keywords

CSR Environmental Reporting
Decoupling
Financial Indicators
Greenwashing
Organizational Strain
Socially Responsible Investment Ratings

Subject Area

Business Administration

Advisor(s)

Arnold, Denis

Committee Members

Hansen, Jared
Gooty, Janaki
Khouja, Moutaz

Degree Note

Thesis (D.B.A.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2020.

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Rights Holder Information

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Identifier

Knight_uncc_0694D_12361

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:1961