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Organizational responses to environmental demands: opening the black box
Author(s) -
Delmas Magali A.,
Toffel Michael W.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
strategic management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 11.035
H-Index - 286
eISSN - 1097-0266
pISSN - 0143-2095
DOI - 10.1002/smj.701
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , black box , business , affect (linguistics) , new institutionalism , organizational ecology , institutional theory , survey data collection , test (biology) , marketing , institutionalism , public relations , industrial organization , economics , sociology , management , political science , politics , computer science , ecology , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , communication , artificial intelligence , law , biology
This article combines new and old institutionalism to explain differences in organizational strategies. We propose that differences in the influence of corporate departments lead their facilities to prioritize different external pressures and thus adopt different management practices. Specifically, we argue that external constituents—including customers, regulators, legislators, local communities, and environmental activist organizations—who interact with influential corporate departments are more likely to affect facility managers' decisions. As a result, managers of facilities that are subjected to comparable institutional pressures adopt distinct sets of management practices that appease different external constituents. We test our framework in the context of the adoption of environmental management practices using an original survey and archival data obtained for nearly 500 facilities. We find support for these hypotheses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.