Organization and Strategy Seminar（2019-15）

Topic: Scaling Up, Scoping Down: Coevolving Stakeholder Influences and Corporate Environmental Practices

Speaker: Frank Wijen, Erasmus University

Time: Friday, 15 November, 14:00-15:30 pm

Location: Room 216, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

Proactive firms engage their stakeholders as they seek to mainstream their voluntary environmental practices. Extant studies have glossed over the temporal dynamics of the scale and scope of these practices. This inductive study focuses on the coevolution of stakeholder influences and corporate environmental practices in six large, European-based business organizations over a ten-year period. In response to stakeholder demands, the focal organizations sought to mobilize and integrate the resources supplied by multiple stakeholders. The ensuing environmental practices were subject to divergent scale and scope dynamics. Whereas voluntary practices were scaled up when the support of all major stakeholders could be secured, they were scaled down when stakeholders with complementary resources resisted. Over time, firms discontinued nonconsensual voluntary actions, thereby narrowing the scope of their environmental practices. In conclusion, business organizations optimize, rather than maximize, their voluntary environmental practices. Stakeholder influences act as a double-edged sword, both driving and constraining the expansion of voluntary environmental practices.

Introduction:

Frank Wijen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He holds a PhD in management from Tilburg University, where he also worked as a Senior Researcher. His research interests include institutional processes, globalization, power and influence, organizational learning, and corporate and national environmental management, with a particular interest in the self-regulation of transnational environmental commons. Frank is a Senior Editor at Organization Studies and published in journals such as Academy of Management Review (2014, 2015), California Management Review (2011, 2018), Organization Science (2013), Organization Studies (2006, 2007), Strategic Management Journal (2018), and Strategic Organization (2011), and was the leading editor of A handbook of globalisation and environmental policy, second edition (2012, published by Edward Elgar).

//www.eur.nl/people/frank-wijen

Your participation is warmly welcomed!